From Dust
by arrosaarmiarma
Summary: 21 years ago, at the instant the Snap occurred, thirty super-powered children appeared from nowhere, all across the world. Seven such children were adopted by a mysterious benefactor, and raised in isolation as a family of heroes. After his disappearance, they all went their own way. Now they reunite to fight a new threat - which may be one of their own.
1. PART I: The Urnfield

" _For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return._ "

Later they would call it the Decimation.

Fractures cracking across skin, flesh withering into dust, life fading in a single instant.

The ashes were swept away by the wind, flaking into a thousand facsimiles of themselves, and for a moment they could have been beautiful, caught as they were in a dancing tornado like so many dust motes in wan sunlight. Men crumpled where they stood, women collapsed mid-step, and children were caught mid-turn, as though searching whence this destruction came, the single simple motion enough to disintegrate them in a moment. Toys fell from vanished hands. The sun was blocked by a cloud of grey smoke.

Later, they would call it the Decimation, and Mr Thorn would scoff. Not entirely accurate, he would say. The Romans had taken only one tenth, and Thanos had taken half, exactly half. He referred to it as the Reckoning.

No form of life was left unscathed. All fell to ruination. Miss Loss had planted fresh flowers in the garden of the Eyrie only the day before, and in a single instant they withered. Their roots shrivelled and grew black, petals wilting from their stems at the merest touch of her fingertips, the colour draining from them as blood from a cooling corpse. They died in their multitudes, lost in swathes as though to the scythe of a reaper, as so too were millions of souls harvested in turn.

And yet, from destruction and devastation and decimation, existence wormed forth. Life clung to life.

All across the world, in various locations - a Tokyo subway, the wide open green of a Kenyan plateau, a New York street - clouds of dust and ash that had once had names and faces and lives coalesced, like a murmur of flies spinning in concert. And when they faded and fluttered and fell away once more, they left flesh and form in their wake: a child, no older than two years old, wide awake and utterly, utterly silent.

* * *

" _Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust._ "

Later they would call them the Forsaken.

Infants and children, unblemished and whole, entirely without memory of whence they came.

Most were taken into government custody, distributed between orphanages. Preliminary medical tests revealed no anomalies, no aberrations, no unusual features, except for their miraculous appearances and spontaneous creation. And in the long days and weeks that followed the Decimation, no one was inclined to ask too many questions. Chalk it up to another strange occurrence in a week that was full of them. There were too many lost to mourn to bother oneself with the found.

Later, they would call them the Forsaken, and Mr Thorn would shake his head. Hyperbole, he would say. They had not been abandoned; he had seen to that personally. He called them the Orphans.

The first Forsaken began displaying unusual abilities only a single short day after their strange not-birth, and the others followed in suit without delay. It would have been impossible to discern rhyme or reason from the powers they possessed, for there was clearly no pattern - some were powerful, some were nearly useless, and others still were so very esoteric and specific that it took years to discover they were gifted at all. They shared only a single trait: their powers extracted a heavy toll.

And of the thirty Forsaken children that were reported, Mr Thorn found and adopted seven. A good number, seven.

In some cases, it took him weeks to locate another. Some of the children did not even realise they were Forsaken, rather than abandoned at the orphanage in the normal way. Some had been taken before the state had found them. Some had already died. In all, Mr Thorn encountered twenty three Forsaken children. And in the end, he brought seven of them into his home - only seven.

* * *

" _I will show you fear in a handful of dust_."

Later they would call it the Urnfield.

Ghosts clung to its very foundations. The gate was kept locked. The grounds stretched wide and desolate.

The seven children were themselves no older than seven when they arrived, and eyed one another with apprehension and distrust. A strange thing, to have six siblings created from dust and ash. Acceptance came slowly; trust, slower still; love, for some, never grew. They were flawed figures with strange gifts, and tension often flourished. Nonetheless, they were grateful for this odd haven they had found. The house was too big for so few people, and its very bones felt hollow.

Later, they would call it the Urnfield, and Mr Thorn would look disapproving. Unnecessarily foreboding, he would say. And yet he would not permit them to call it _home._ It was, in his parlance, the Aviary.

Over the years, they dwelled in this strange house, and honed their gifts, and lived a strange facsimile of an ordinary life. Mr Thorn would not permit them to call him _father;_ on that point, he was clear. And yet he did expect them to become a family. Not only a family, but one that could use their gifts to help in crises, to defend others from danger, to improve the world. And this they did for seven years.

And in their fifteenth year of existence, just as the Forsaken began to wonder about their origins, Mr Thorn vanished from his office on a clear October night.

They never saw him again. Old tensions in the family rose - brother blaming sister, sister accusing brother. Some saw their opportunity for a normal life. Some saw their chance to search for answers. Others still were cast adrift, lost without the guidance of the strange, enigmatic man who had been their sole constant in life. There was no body to bury; the schism came without ceremony. The gates were shut for a final time, as even Miss Loss left the old building to ruin. The family went seven years without seeing one another, until each received the same ominous message to reunite at the Urnfield.


	2. 001

_Blazing through the cinder wearing nothing but the future on his sleeve_  
 _Wallow in nostalgia, in your tiny universe reigning supreme_  
 _And they caught you running scared of the drum inside your head_  
 _Beating with the past, not with your heart_  
 _An indifferent ending to the perfect start_  
 _And this is where we part._

 _-_ The Gaslight Anthem

* * *

The Urnfield had never felt so much like a haunted house.

Adrian could spot its vague silhouette from the iron-wrought gate - arches and spires gave way to gloomy windows framed by thick dark curtains that he knew from experience were nailed in place over the glass. The winding path up to it was framed on either side by what the locals called _hanging_ trees, chestnuts and willows with twitching branches casting questionable shadows, and opened up out onto a square gravel foreyard. In the seven years that had elapsed since the Urnfield orphans had called this place home, weeds had overtaken the small space; ivy had reclaimed the stone surface of the austere house; wild tangles of branches and feathers indicated the number of nests that had developed in the eaves and chimneys of the building.

He couldn't help but pause in front of the statute that had been erected in front of the front door, its granite surface utterly smooth and unblemished despite the years that had passed and the thickets of moss that had encroached and obscured the features of the man it commemorated. There was a sense of reverence that utterly enveloped Adrian, simply standing in front of the statue's cold blank eyes and feeling not only watched, but somehow _seen_. Gathered together around this effigy, hurt and confused at their father's disappearance, had been the last time the entire family had been together.

Adrian hadn't seen his siblings for over seven years.

He couldn't help but hope that he wasn't the only one who had received the message to reunite at the Urnfield. The idea of seeing the old motley group again was galvanizing - the radioactive girl, the boy with the magic eyes, the eldritch twins. His family. The Zavalas had taken him in and been kind to him, had loved him and given him every opportunity - and yet, it had been with the other Urnfield orphans that Adrian had truly found his place in the world for the very first time.

After a moment in quiet contemplation, Adrian moved towards the front door. It had been left ajar; the unoiled hinges groaned and swayed very softly in the late summer breeze. He put a hand on the wooden surface, and paused for a moment on the porch, shutting his eyes and listening to the silence that had swallowed the space whole. No wisps here, he thought. Despite all the suffering and pain and trauma they had experienced over the years they had called this strange place home, there were no echoes of tortured death. It was the one thing that assured Adrian that Mr Thorn, wherever he had gone, had not died on that cold, clear October night.

And when he at last pushed open the door, he found that Number One was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs that dominated the foyer, her forearms resting languidly on her knees, her face set in her customary expression of wry apprehension.

For a split instant, Adrian felt fifteen years old again. She had barely changed at all. She still radiated aloofness. Number Three had been the one to say it best: it was, quite simply, the intrinsic air of ' _your daughter calls me daddy_ '.

"I didn't send the message," Zahara said, stubbornly, before Adrian could speak. She tended to do that - get her words in before anyone else could speak. "Did you?"

Adrian shook his head, his dark hair flicking against his high cheekbones. "...no." The message, discovered as a small letter stowed during the night in the boot of his Kevlar combat suit, had been a surprise - and he wasn't yet sure if it was a pleasant one.

"One of the others, then?" She tilted her head, her furrowed eyebrows dark slashes against the sallow pallor of her dark skin. Such a Zahara expression. "You came all this way..?"

"I thought the family might be in trouble."

She laughed. She had a long, narrow wound, open and crimson, across one cheekbone. "You always were a fucking idiot, Shadow."

But there was something there. Adrian wasn't imagining it. She shared his gratitude at seeing one another again, for the first time since they had first schismed and splintered and separated. There was a warmth in her eyes that almost didn't suit her. Familiarity rushed forward - not quite the overwhelming joyful homecoming Adrian had dared to hope for, but it was _something_.

Adrian resisted the urge to smile. "Bit harsh coming from you, Thin Man."

"Clinging to code-names, are we?" Number Three was a ghost, his voice preceding him into the room as though he had reeled it out on a string. Adrian turned to see the surface of the wood-paneled wall warp and flicker as his older brother forced the very fabric of the world to adapt around him and permit him entrance to the Urnfield foyer. His iron-toe boots left clouds of red soil where he stepped onto the worn floorboards; even in the dim light, the knives on his belt glinted with the implicit promise of violence. "And they say _I'm_ stubborn."

He made remaking reality look as easy as breathing.

"When I find a name that suits you better, Abyss," Zahara said darkly. "I'll use it."

"I've missed you too, Zee." Ivan's smile was low and languid. His hair was the dark of something precious burned beyond salvage. He hadn't shaved or slept in a few days. His cheekbones were sharp enough to draw blood. The weariness in his eyes finally suited him.

"The feeling's not mutual," Zahara said, lying through her teeth.

"Sure it's not."

Adrian resisted the urge to bound forward and hug his brother. He knew better. Ivan had never been the most... physically affectionate of the siblings. Even now, when his eyes fell on Adrian, there was something cold and remote about his gaze and Adrian could not help but wonder what his brother had got up to in the long seven years that had passed between rift and reunion.

Unlike Zahara, Adrian thought, Ivan tended to leave the scent of _atrocity_ in his wake. He had been one of the first to leave after the schism - in the night, wordless and soundless. Adrian could still remember the taste of smoke and blood, the grief etched on his siblings' faces, the dizzying sensation of the earth being ripped from under his feet. Mr Thorn's disappearance had been only the beginning of the fracture between the siblings.

Zahara glanced at Ivan. "I thought you'd be the last one to respond to a call to arms."

Ivan folded his arms and looked disinclined to offer more than a few words in answer. "Curiosity," he said simply. He paused. " _Morbid_ curiosity."

Zahara and Adrian both knew better than to ask. It was outside the realm of possibility that Ivan had been the one to send the message - which just, Adrian thought, left the question of who. But there was another question on his mind for the time being - he couldn't contain his own curiosity for much longer, peering around Ivan as though searching for something hidden. The words spilled out, uncontrolled and uncontrollable, even when Ivan's expression altered abruptly to suggest the younger man should shut his mouth if he knew what was good for him. "Where's Essi?" He was sure the anticipation and excitement in his voice was almost palpable.

Ivan's cold eyes rested on Adrian for a long moment. "I wouldn't know."

Adrian's initial joy at seeing his brother was withering, any hope of a happy family reunion sinking leadenly in his chest. "You guys didn't..."

He wasn't sure he could imagine an Ivan without an Esther.

"Stay in touch?" Ivan's voice was gravelly and brusque. "I haven't seen the Butcher in seven years."

Adrian hesitated. "I haven't seen _any_ of the others in seven years."

"Join the club," Zahara said simply, stretching her limbs lazily. "I don't think any family fights quite like ours, huh?"

She straightened into a standing position in a single fluid motion that was a clear reminder of the combat training the Urnfield orphans had undergone - Zahara's movements never ceased to be entirely without effort. She rested her left hand on the banister of the stairs, sending clouds of dust into the air. The entire building had the air of a corpse left to rot. How long had it been since life had inhabited this space? Adrian wished for the first time that he had agreed to allow his human sister, Corinna, to come with him, if only to have a friendly face to turn to, without years of bad blood choking the words in his throat.

"I'm going to put a fresh pot on," Zahara said, biting out her words like each one was a small act of brutality. She had always reminded Adrian of a cat, half-feral, with the same terse, curt attitude that told Adrian she didn't want to show her true emotions at the prospect of reconciliation. "If there's three of us, there'll probably be more, and I'm going to need the caffeine to deal with all six of you idiots." She looked at Ivan. "And you look like death, Abyss." Now the Thin Man quirked a half-smile. "Some things never change, I suppose."

* * *

 **Number One:** The Thin Man - Zahara "Zara" Al-Yatim **  
Number Two:** **  
Number Three:** The Abyss - Ivan "Vanya" Kinzhalov **  
Number Four:** **  
** **Number Five:** **  
Number Six:** The Shadow - Adrian "Fire Kid" Zavala **  
Number Seven:** The Butcher - Esther "Essi" Graves

* * *

 **Please review and let me know what you think of this chapter!**


	3. 002

_Children behave_  
 _That's what they say when we're together_  
 _And watch how you play_  
 _They don't understand_  
 _And so we're running just as fast as we can_  
 _Holding on to one another's hand_  
 _Trying_ _' to get away into the night  
_ _And then you say:  
_ _I think we're alone now,_  
 _There doesn't seem to be anyone around._  
 _I think we're alone now,_  
 _The beating of our hearts is the only sound.  
_

\- Ritchie Cordell

* * *

Someone, somewhere, had put on a record. The scratchy, hollow sound followed Rezar through the hallways he had once called home, but the echo of the tinny music only served to amplify the eerie feeling of loss that permeated every strip of wallpaper, every board on the floor. Whoever had put needle to vinyl, he thought, it had probably been one of Leo's records originally - it certainly sounded like the other boy's idiosyncratic taste in music, all brash and bass and brass, the rhythm resonating through the cavernous space as though the Urnfield had developed its own irregular heartbeat.

He couldn't say that he had expected to feel nostalgic, but when the chorus hit, he thought it was almost as though the music had drawn ragged, ghostly fragments of strange childhood from the bones of the building. He could remember dancing to this song, with that reckless abandon that the very young have, before they learn better than to show their hearts so easily - a little group of orphans simply being children, doing childish things. Human, Rez mused. It was one of the most human moments he could recall from that period of his life.

The record player had been older than their father-who-was-not-a-father. It was a small miracle it was still working at all. He followed the music's path: up the servant's staircase, whose tenth step still bore the etching _3+7_ ; down the Caravaggio Hallway, so named because it had, thanks to Adrian, been plunged into a permanent darkness alleviated only by the most powerful of light sources; past Zara's old bedroom, at very the front of the house, with the lead-lined containment unit she had called a bed for the better portion of her childhood left abandoned as though expecting her imminent return at any moment.

And here and there, there were the faintest reminders of Rez's own legacy imprinted on the building, some small reminder that he had lived here once upon a lifetime ago. Gold dust caked the sole of his shoes; aureate flowers, resplendent in their sheen, clustered lifeless and deathless in gilt vases; white gloves strewn here and there, as though in temper, and never retrieved, as though in shame.

Rez's gloves had always been white; Essi's had always been black. Opposing chess pieces, Rez thought.

The music was fading now, the voices warping as though lamenting their slow evanescence as Rez took the final set of stairs to the kitchen on the second floor. Now that the music was waning, he could hear the quiet murmur of voices from behind the wall - evidence of life, he thought wryly. Dusk was falling very hesitantly over the estate; a warm glow spilled under the door, pockmarked inconsistently by the intermittent shadows of someone pacing. Rez paused at the door without turning the handle, giving himself a moment to gather his thoughts. Truth be told, he had no idea what to expect from this little soirée - what could possibly require their reunion?

He pushed back the malicious voice at the back of his mind whispering _he_ _might be back._

It had been seven years since Mr Thorn disappeared. It had been seven years since he had left the Urnfield. It had been seven years since he had last seen his siblings.

It had been _two_ years since he had last used his abilities.

He had a feeling that gold streak was going to be broken, whether he liked it or not.

The knock on the kitchen door was almost sardonic, muffled by the salt-and-sugar gloves Rez was wearing today - old habits break hard, he thought wryly. "Knock knock," he called dryly. "I'm not interrupting, am I?"

Without even glancing inside the room, he could have painted the tableau before him, all his siblings in their respective positions: Vanya pacing impatiently by the bay windows which overlooked that cemetery that gave the Urnfield its name, his features schooled into an impassive mask of contumacy; Zara at the head of the table, her shoulders held tense as though expecting an argument, stirring a cup of coffee with a violence that suggested personal insult; Adrian leaning against the fridge, his eyes flitting between first and third siblings, his expression suggesting that he had hoped to find something a little more hopeful when he arrived home. Rez could even identify precisely where the others would have taken their places - Leo would have alighted on the countertop or found a spot on the table itself, folding his limbs into a nervous bundle of potential energy; Essi would have found a place on the windowseat, where the wan light would have obscured the worst of the mutilation. Rez himself would probably have taken a chair next to Zara, swinging it back on two legs and putting his shoes on the table so he could feign sleep.

Even after seven years, he thought, when you know someone you know them.

And he stepped into the kitchen to find he had been correct on all counts.

Adrian, straightening up with an abruptness that shook the fridge: "Rezar, what did you do to your _hair?_ "

Zara, with a sardonicism that could have dried the Atlantic: "Didn't I say I could smell something rotten?"

Vanya, mid-pace, framed by the etiolated dusk-light filtering slowly in through the bay-windows: stony silence.

That did, Rez thought, seem like typical Vanya.

"Evening, kids," he said, deadpan. "How have the last seven years been treating you?"

Vanya didn't need to answer. Rez felt confident he could hazard a guess at what his older brother had got up to during their separation, but even without such conjecture it was evident that the Abyss had been using, overusing, abusing, his abilities. Something serpentine writhed beneath the tan skin of his forearm, like a worm was trapped in his flesh and pressing to break free, to taste the air. Whatever it was, a colony of them thrashed around his cheekbone; something sharp within him, something with talons, pressed against the thin surface of his throat, and twitched occasionally, as though close to waking.

Zara's green-grey eyes were as sharp as ever. "Better now for seeing you, Fortune," she said dryly. "We were just taking bets on which flotsam would float up next."

"Oooh," Rez said lazily. "Which bastard have I won money for?"

Zara inclined her head towards Adrian, who still seemed rather fascinated by the new state of Rez's hair.

"I expect a cut," Rez said simply. "Fifty percent should do..."

Vanya resumed his pacing, and Rez took his predicted seat by the stove, kicking back to put his brogues on the table, gold dust filtering from the soles onto the wooden surface in little glowing clouds. "Caffeine?"

Adrian slid a cup across the table, steam billowing from the surface; Rez caught it by the handle without even looking. The simple motion irritated Rez more than he could articulate. Clearly he hadn't had much luck leaving the little parts of the Urnfield behind. Even the first sip of coffee was familiar: Zara's particular homebrew was strong, dark, and as bitter as Vanya. Not bad, Rez thought reluctantly. He didn't think he'd found its equal in the outside world just yet. You could replace your siblings with dogs and cats, he mused wryly, but good coffee was a little harder to approximate.

"Now, I don't know about you good people," Rez continued, setting the cup back onto the table with a decisiveness. "But that fucking message was one of the creepiest things I've seen in a while, no?"

Adrian nodded. "I found the letter in my shoe," he said slowly. "Which means someone was in my house. While I was asleep, while my sister was asleep..." Vanya paused in his pacing and turned to look at Adrian with something unreadable in his expression. The younger man took only a moment to realise his mistake. "Oh, it's not... I didn't... I went back to the Zavalas."

"Ah, domestic bliss," Zara said caustically. Rez didn't think he was imagining the faint traces of hurt in her eyes. The family may not have been together for the past seven years, but he supposed it would still hurt to feel like Adrian had replaced you in an instant. " _Mazel tov._ "

Adrian looked like he was about to respond when Rez interrupted. "We all got the same fucking communiqué, then?" _Come home. It's urgent._

"Miss Loss, I presume," Zara said, inclining her head to indicate her agreement. She didn't bother to tell Rez to watch his language. It was a lost cause at this pint. "It would make the most sense."

Vanya cocked an eyebrow. "It was probably Leo," he said. "We all know it was probably Leo."

Zara didn't look entirely convinced. "Last I heard, the Haruspex was in White Feather."

Adrian blinked. "The _asylum_?"

"I think they're called psychiatric facilities nowadays," Vanya said, slightly distractedly.

"Don't tell me you didn't see that coming," Rez cut in. "I'm surprised the little shit didn't end up there sooner."

Adrian shook his head. "Even so." He glanced down at his shoes. "If I had known..."

Vanya laughed under his breath. The things under his skin curled as though with mirth. "What? You would have visited?"

Zara and Vanya didn't often agree, but the older girl's eyes were cool and steady as she nodded. "After what happened?"

The corner of Adrian's lips tightened and curled. "Maybe," he said stubbornly.

"You think you're a better person than you are," Vanya said bluntly. He turned to the other siblings. "If there's four..."

"There will be seven," Rez finished. "God willing... provided none of our beloved brothers and sisters have met a grisly end since last we met."

Vanya's gaze was unamused.

Zara nodded, and stood. In the few minutes they had sat there together, the lines of their body tense and still, the sun had disappeared beneath the horizon and left only the memory of its bloody light behind, as the pale white stars began to peer through the cracks in the clouds overhead. "I don't know about you guys," she said dourly. Rez thought his words had stirred something in his sister - a reminder of why they had split in the first place, perhaps, or an unpleasant imagining of what could have befallen their ragtag family in the interim. "But I'm going to get some sleep. If we don't get answers tomorrow... I'm out of here."

Adrian glanced up at his sister with sadness brewing behind his eyes, but said nothing as Zara left the room, shutting the door firmly behind her.

Vanya shrugged. "Can't disagree," he said simply. And then he fractured, as only Vanya could, and it was easy - he was already etiolated, his colour drained wan by the dim light that permeated the unlit kitchen, so it was easy for him to crack and to vanish as he typically did. His skin flaked away, becoming hoar feathers which became gold grosbeaks and pygmy falcons which became dust, and his hair fell as black ash. His eyes fell as beetles and his teeth, white and sharp, melted into snowflakes and ice which fluttered down onto the tile of the kitchen in an impossible breeze.

"He does love," Rez said thoughtfully after a moment. "To make a dramatic exit, doesn't he?"

He stood and went to the door without waiting for a reply. "It's nice to see you again, Rezar," Adrian said, and Rez looked back at his brother and said, "I wish I could say the same," and the silence afterwards followed him like a phantom all the way back down the stairs and through the hallway and towards the foyer.

He couldn't articulate what made him veer away from the door and a return to normality, but he found himself walking across the oriental rug in the eastern antechamber and towards the drawing room, which had been something like a living room for the children in their youth, when some of them were still too suspicious of Mr Thorn and Miss Loss and their ash-and-dust siblings to risk sleeping alone on a higher floor. There had been a piano. If Leo was in the right mood, he would play. It was strange the things Rez had almost forgotten.

The drawing room was drenched in shadows, but even in the thick gloom that clustered around him, Rez could make out the faint silhouette of a small, lean figure curled on the couch. Her dark hair was strewn wildly, her breathing almost imperceptible even in slumber. Stepping closer, straining to stay quiet, he found familiarity in the ease with which he veered around those floorboards most likely to rasp and complain. As he drew nearer the couch, he could see more clearly that the wide eastward window had been picked and cracked open to a tiny slit; the pane was speckle-stained with the rusty claret of blood. Their mysterious visitor had crawled in like a thief in the night. He couldn't say that was out of character.

Rez would have recognised her anywhere, even after all those years - she was his sister, after all - but she seemed unfamiliar nonetheless, a faded childhood memory replaced by crisp reality, all the soft edges of childhood worn away and replaced by the sharp features of near-adulthood. She had a dagger-like shape, narrow waist and hips and shoulders, and limbs that seemed too long and lean for the rest of her, as though they had been taken from some other girl. Her customary black gloves were still firmly in place, he noticed, but one finger was hollow, without flesh to fill it. Dark shadows had been carved out under her eyes and the stress drew all her skin tight and taut over all the sharp bones of her face. She had bruises on her cheekbones, blossoming blue-and-black like a storm-cloud. Blood that was not her own painted her neck and collarbone crimson.

The youngest of the orphans. The seventh of seven. The Butcher.

A low zephyr was ghosting across the room, carrying with it a gelid chill that stirred the hair and ruffled the clothing, swirled dust motes in the air in a morbid reminder of the Reckoning and lifted the folio of strewn books as though a phantom hand were rifling through the pages. Rezar didn't stop to consider his actions for long; after casting about the room for an instant, he moved on fraternal instinct to pull a dark gray eiderdown from one of the armchairs and settled it gently, very gently, over the smaller orphan, hoping it would not disturb her. Even in sleep, Essi's expression never seemed entirely at peace. He supposed it came with the territory. He wondered what savagery she had perpetrated on the world since he had last seen her.

He didn't intend to linger - she may have been his sister, unfamiliar and altered by the passage of time and yet irrefutably, undeniably, his sister... but the memory of the last time they had seen one another hung heavy and oppressive between them, even in sleep. Rez stepped back out of the drawing room with something that felt like lead in his heart, wondering exactly what any of them had hoped to achieve by coming back here. He could, should and would leave once again in the morning, before he could get caught back up in the chaos and tragedy of being an Urnfield orphan once again, before Mr Thorn's wraith could ensnare him once more.

And yet, stepping out into the foyer, Rez realized that was much easier said than done, because in that instant, he observed that, quite silently, a dirty white ice-cream van had materialized from absolutely nothing and found itself wedged firmly within the wall over the front door, brick fused irremediably to steel as though it had always existed so. Its front wheels were still spinning; Rez imagined if he stepped outside to check, he would see that the back ones were doing the same. There was the unmistakable scent of burning rubber and overcooked oranges.

 _Oranges_ , Rez thought, and as though on cue the door of the van burst open and out tumbled Leo, with singed curly hair and shards of broken glass embedded in his forehead. He landed on his feet. He always did.

"I heard," the Haruspex said, his hoarse voice somewhere between dazed and expectant. "That there was a family reunion afoot?"

* * *

 **Number One:** The Thin Man - Zahara "Zara" Al-Yatim **  
Number Two:** **  
Number Three:** The Abyss - Ivan "Vanya" Kinzhalov **  
Number Four:** The Fortune - Rezar "Rez" Orval **  
****Number Five:** The Haruspex - Leontios "Leo" Kelly **  
Number Six:** The Shadow - Adrian "Fire Kid" Zavala **  
Number Seven:** The Butcher - Esther "Essi" Graves

* * *

 **Please review! It motivates me so much. Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who has given me their thoughts so far! I hope I am doing the characters and story justice.**

 **I hope you like this chapter! Let me know what you think of the characters and their dynamics so far.**


	4. 003

_Held on to hope like a noose, like a rope_  
 _God and medicine take no mercy on him_  
 _Poisoned his blood, and burned out his throat_  
 _Enough is enough, he's a long way from home_

 _Days of my youth wasted on a selfish fool_  
 _Who ran for the hills from the hand you were dealt_  
 _I flew far away, as far as I could go_  
 _Your time is running out_  
 _And I'm a long way from home_

\- The Lumineers

* * *

Little white flowers unfurled themselves against the dark canvas of her eyelids, star-shaped explosions of light that burst as sudden as a heart-attack and left scarlet marks like wounds floating in the empty space even as they faded, and the buzzing murmur of voices under the floor ebbed and waned, slowly, like she was tuning a radio, bringing the disparate components of the world around her into a cohesive whole. Zara sat up in bed - not her own bed, she noticed dazedly, or at least not the bed that had been hers, all layers of lead and concrete and steel, but the bed that had been the Grimalkin's, the railings wound tightly with lace ribbons to form a makeshift dreamcatcher - and cast about for a single panicked instant as though expecting a natural disaster to have unfolded within the room. It was the Urnfield, she thought. It did something to her thoughts, put her on the defensive, pulled all her nerves tight as violin strings so that every little thing seemed a danger.

The fog of sleep faded gradually. Zara swung out her legs and put her forearms onto her thighs as she took in a deep breath, her dark hair flicking about her face as she took a deep breath. She could not recall of what she had dreamed, only that it had left her with crawling skin and the deep, unshakeable sensation of foreboding that had persisted. It was as though the Grimalkin had left his nightmares woven into the very fabric of the bed - but Zara could not deny the vague sense of comfort she derived from the familiarity of the scent and sound of the room. Her own lead-lined bed had never been a comfort the same way falling asleep in a sibling's room had been, record still playing and sketchbook pinned under her head while she dozed.

And speaking of siblings, she thought dryly, she could hear quiet conversation down the hall. At this long distance she struggled to identify their voices with absolute certainty, although she didn't think it was possible to mistake the Fortune's golden voice for that of another. The Grimalkin's room had been on the bottom floor; it had always been one of the nicest bedroom given to the siblings, Zara thought, all oak wood-panelling and indigo velvet curtains. Zara couldn't deny that she had always kind of felt like such a gorgeous space was wasted on their fickle second sibling.

She slid on her combat boots and stood, tugging at the rips in her jeans, before pulling on her bomber jacket. She glanced only briefly in the mirror - she wasn't sure what kind of an impression one should aim to make on estranged siblings who hated you, she thought, but Zara's image had never drifted far from devil-may-care. Of all the orphans with whom she had reunited since arriving back at the Urnfield, Zara rather believed she herself was the one who had changed the least. Even the Fortune's hair hadn't survived the separation unaltered, she thought with wry amusement as she left the room and walked down the hall towards the front door.

She stopped abruptly at the sight of the Haruspex, and forced her hands into her pockets. There was something about her fifth sibling, Zara thought to herself, something she had never managed to fully articulate. There was something _wrong_ about the way he looked, although it was not immediately obvious - it was a quality which made you look twice, and then made you never want to look again. It was as though something inhuman and unreal had taken the shape of a handsome young man, and was doing its best to feign humanity and reality in a skin that did not belong to it. Even after seven years as his sister, Zara did not think she could say what colour the Haruspex's eyes were. She had never dared to look at him long enough to find out; conversations were always carried out with Zara addressing his eyebrows, or the iron frame of his glasses, when he had still worn spectacles. Zara couldn't remember when he had stopped wearing them - or when he had stopped wearing shoes. His bare feet crunched over broken glass as he moved around the Fortune, saying something distractedly in that lilt of his.

Zara stepped forward. "You arrived in style, I see."

She indicated the ice-cream van fused to the wall of the house, the white of the paint now leaking slowly across the brick, bleaching the former slate-gray into a pale eggshell colour that reminded Zara of the grey of dawn over the cemetery. The wheels were still revolving, but much slower now. The scent of citrus permeating the entire space, so strong as to be dizzying.

"I think," the Haruspex mused, and spun, glass grinding, to frame the van with his hands as though imagining a pictureframe. "That this technically qualifies as modern art." He flicked his gaze playfully over towards Zara, who stared resolutely at the collar of his long trenchcoat. "It's a commentary on modern consumerist culture. Very _avant-garde_. Neoteric subversion. Critics are already raving."

"And here I thought I was the creative one." Zara folded her arms and inclined her head towards the wall. "Mind you," she said slowly. "I also thought the Abyss had a little more... _s_ _ubtlety_."

The door of the house swung open, buffeted by a winter gale which howled like a wounded, feral creature for a horrible moment through the eaves and arches of the space before settling and coalescing into the lean form of the Abyss, with hair like gloaming and eyes like pitch. He spoke as though he had been present the entire time, with his eyebrow arched and a sardonic tone to his voice. "Subtle is my middle name," he said without much preamble.

"Ivan Subtle Kinzhalov," the Shadow added, as he walked slowly down the stairs to join them, his hair tousled by sleep. "It's a family name."

"Leo didn't send the message," the Abyss added.

The Fortune cocked his head lazily. "I know we joke you're a dog, Vanya, but you fucking _fetched_ our brother?"

"Seemed simpler." The Abyss cast a hard look at the Haruspex, but it did not escape Zara's notice that even the hardened reality warper did not seem capable of meeting the shorter man's eyes. "This lunatic. One hundred and seven miles an hour. Wrong side of the road."

The Haruspex shrugged unapologetically. He still had the paper wristband of the psychiatric facility around his right wrist, Zara noticed, or maybe it was from a music festival. With her brother, you could never really tell. "The alternative was keeping you all waiting." He raised his hands as though to embrace the entire foyer. "What can I say? I missed the old haunt." He curled his fingers into fists and cocked his head, curly brown hair falling playfully across the gash on his forehead. "And all the little ghosts as well."

"Not ghosts yet," the Shadow reminded his younger brother.

"Yet." The words came from the threshold of the drawing room. "There's time left in the night."

It was the Butcher, small and slender, her eyes still dark from lack of sleep. The Haruspex's face creased into an enormous smile that could have outshone the sun, and he bounded past the Fortune to sweep his youngest sister into an embrace. "Esther, my _darling_ , how have you been?"

He withdrew and held the Butcher at an arm's length as though to critically assess her. His clever gaze immediately caught the faded silver of old wounds, the fading green of had-been-bruises, the streaks of blood on her throat, and he cocked a dark eyebrow in savage amusement.

"You've been spreading misery, little rabid one?"

"Here and there," the Butcher responded softly. Zara had almost forgotten the particular quality of her sister's voice - like she had inhaled smoke as a child and had spent her entire life trying to cough it out again, low and husky.

" _Here and there_ ," the Haruspex echoed in a perfect facsimile of the Butcher's voice. "Well, you look _thin_." He swung again to point at the van. "I've brought ice-cream."

The Butcher looked as though she had forgotten how to smile, but she was the only one of the orphans who could meet the Haruspex's gaze without flinching, and she did it now with amusement brewing. "Very thoughtful, Leo."

"Bit of a coincidence, actually, but I always bring a gift when I'm invited somewhere." The Haruspex's smile was infectious. "I am cooking breakfast for everyone. It isn't philanthropy - I haven't eaten in about..." He glanced at his watch. "Three days. And a half. Who's for waffles?"

It did not escape Zara's notice that the Fortune and the Shadow had raised their hands.

The seventh sibling's voice was very wry. "Remember that brain damage you said you didn't have, Lee?"

He nudged her with his elbow. "I was like this _before_."

"You sure were," Zara said. She had almost forgotten what a Tasmanian Devil the Haruspex could be, spinning into a situation like a tornado, and she had almost forgotten how much she had missed it. "How have you been, Haruspex?"

He turned, one wrist still resting casually on the Butcher's shoulder. "As well as could be expected." He raised a hand to block the question she knew he could sense coming. "No. My powers never came back." He shook his head. "That night..."

 _The night that had broken them apart._

"It did something permanent, I think."The Haruspex held up his hand, and snapped his fingers, and then shrugged. "Nothing."

"Oh." The Shadow's face was creased in concern, but the Haruspex waved away his siblings' worries.

"The world spins on. It's been seven years. One adjusts, my dears. God forbid, I might be the most normal of us."

Zara's eyes were on the Abyss, whose eyes had not in all of this time moved from the Butcher. There was something in his gaze... Zara couldn't name it. The Abyss was always bitter, but this was something resentful, angry, hollow. It did something to the strings of Zara's heart to even glimpse such an expression on the face of her sibling. The Butcher seemed to know without looking; she had her gloved hands in her pockets and her gaze fixed resolutely on the hem of the Haruspex's shirt as the other orphan spoke in that brogue of his.

The Fortune had turned to look at the warped ice-cream van with open appreciation. "And you got _this_ shit... where, exactly?"

The Haruspex opened his mouth to answer, when he was interrupted by a voice that Zara did not recognise.

"Oh, fantastic."

The waist-coated man who had appeared at the top of the stairs was clean-shaven and thin, with neatly-parted black hair and rectangular glasses that reflected the dim lamps lighting the foyer. He was holding a pocketwatch in his right hand, and had fixed his eyes firmly upon its face rather than glancing towards the family to whom he was speaking.

"The gang's all here. Took you long enough, I suppose."

At his sudden apparition, it did not escape Zara's notice that the other orphans had immediately tensed as though readying themselves for a scrap; she couldn't deny the exhilaration that swept through her veins at the prospect of fighting alongside her siblings once again.

The Abyss stepped forward, and placed a calloused hand on his knife. Whatever had happened between him and the Butcher, Zara thought, it had inspired something savage in the way he held himself. All the things that dwelled within him moved against his skin with a violence.

The Fortune pulled the glove from his right hand with a slight flourish, flexing his long, slender fingers as though preparing to play a symphony. The corner of his lips were quirked in a smile; it was the expression, Zara thought with amusement, of a man who had just simultaneously won and lost a bet.

The Haruspex put his hand on the Butcher's shoulder and drew her back towards the drawing room, angling his body to place himself between her and the stranger. Zara could not say whether he was trying to protect his sister from the man with the watch, or vice versa.

The Shadow unfolded his arms and took a step backwards as well, away from the stairs, towards the gloom that clustered at the edge of the foyer, cast by the strange alien shape of the van jutting from the wall. Zara admired how the shadows embraced him, winding through his limbs like a lover welcomed home.

The Butcher's eyes, dark and still, fixed on the man at the top of the stairs, but she allowed the Haruspex to move her away, and made no move to remove her gloves, to prepare herself to fight. Zara could see something tired in her sister, something weary which seemed to go beyond a lack of sleep.

Well, that was for the best. No Grimalkin, no Haruspex, no Butcher - and yet, Zara thought with a quiet delight, four Urnfield orphans were still a force like no other. And it felt _right_ to be here, shoulder to shoulder with the Abyss and the Fortune, and watching the darkness of the Shadow flicker and twist around them.

And now it was her turn. Zara the Thin Man curled her fingers into a fist and felt all the molecules around her begin to vibrate, as though they shared her anticipation. She could feel all the light around her, the electromagnetic waves hitting her as surely as a wave of water in the ocean might, and washing over and around her all the same, every different colour striking her bones with a subtly different resonation. And when she moved her arm, she could feel her heart beat driving the waves onwards, absorbing their rhythm into her own, and when she exhaled it was with a tiny, concentrated burst of heat that could have melted steel.

Worst came to worst, they were ready.

"There's no need for violence," the man with the waistcoat said mildly, and shut his pocket-watch with a decisive _click_. "I assure you I come in peace."He cast a cold brown gaze over the assembled siblings. "Just as all of you come at my invitation." He paused. "I can't deny I expected the rest of you a little sooner."

"The rest of us?" Zara stepped forward, realisation dawning in her eyes. "You mean -"

"Number Two arrived earlier? Correct. About two days earlier, actually."The man tilted his head. "How did you think I got those messages to you? His ability has proven very... _useful_."

"If you've hurt Axel..." The Shadow's voice was measured, but there was no mistaking his protectiveness.

"I'll regret it? Oh, I imagine I would. That's a mistake I don't intend to be making, thank you."

The man in the waist-coat calmly stowed his watch into his pocket before glancing back at the assembled orphans of the Urnfield.

"I mean no harm. My name is William Thorn. I'm here to discuss my father's disappearance."

* * *

 **The Urnfield Orphans  
Number One: **The Thin Man - Zahara "Zara" Al-Yatim - _Sr. Cupcake695_ **  
Number Two:** The Grimalkin - Axel "Ace" von Asche - _Flaming Fate Zero_ **  
Number Three:** The Abyss - Ivan "Vanya" Kinzhalov - _el ma iubit_ **  
Number Four:** The Fortune - Rezar "Rez" Orval - _Manny Siliezar_ **  
** **Number Five:** The Haruspex - Leontios "Leo" Kelly - _Songs of Gaslight_ **  
Number Six:** The Shadow - Adrian "Fire Kid" Zavala - _Pixelfun20_ **  
Number Seven:** The Butcher - Esther "Essi" Graves - _Ruze a Koure_

 **Number ? ? ?:** The Prodigal - William Thorn - _alucard deathsinger_

* * *

 **Other characters*  
** **I** Mingyu Huang - _sevenzeroseven_  
 **II** Raion Scion - _71526483_  
 **III** António de Oliveira Salazar - _Wulfekin_  
 **IV** Astrid Nyoodrin - _Disordered Beauty_  
 **V** Jahdiel Gunter - _ShuckiestShuck-FacedShuck4ever_  
 **VI** Jeffrey Kessler - _Wraith's Heart_  
 **VII** Sebastian Crowe - _Lawless-Afterlife_

 _(*I have done my best to rank these characters according to the role I plan to give them - the first two will be major characters, the next two will be recurring, the next two will be minor and the seventh one is a surprise. This may change over time!)_

* * *

 **And so the family is at last completed! Thank you all so very much for all of your thoughtfulness, creativity and generosity.** **I would like to thank you for the amazing reviews so far. I really appreciate the time my readers take to let me know what they think, even if it's negative. I definitely wouldn't be able to write this fast without having the inspiration that they provide.**

 **Probably no chapter tomorrow, as I am also working on an original project at the moment, but I will try to have the next one uploaded on Monday or Tuesday.**


	5. 004

_I'm glad that you were here tonight_  
 _We showed apart the perfect time._  
 _Do you want to try?_  
 _I can waste another year._  
 _I parked the car a mile away_  
 _So we'll have to walk_  
 _If that's okay._  
 _We can take our time -_  
 _There's so much you need to hear_

\- The Coronas

* * *

The sun had melted to a stripe of copper above the trees and the sky was deepening blue. A raven had alighted onto the railing of the balcony outside, its feathers an oil-sheen shimmer, its tongue slit into a sinister fork like that of a snake. One of Vanya's old pets, perhaps. Axel had found himself transfixed by the bird and its movements, able but unwilling to look away; even in the silence and loneliness of what had once been Mr Thorn's office, he sat utterly still, able but unwilling to stand and move about the bureau. He waited not with patience but with considerable apprehension, able but unwilling to use his powers to escape the situation in which he found himself. Hostage.

Not technically a hostage, he reminded himself. Not _technically_ a hostage. Merely an... unwilling accomplice. Was that a term?

This study held a strange place in Axel's heart. The orphans had been forbidden to step foot within its confines until they had total restraint over their abilities, and even then had only been summoned when Mr Thorn had stern words to dispense or sage wisdom to impart. It would always be something of a solemn occasion: two deep black armchairs by the fireplace were eschewed in favour of two wingback chairs in front of the desk, one deep black and one deep white. Mr Thorn would settle himself into the gray bergère behind the desk and address the orphans directly. Axel couldn't remember ever seeing the man blink.

And old habits died hard, because Axel had found himself almost by instinct sitting in the black chair that he had favoured as a child, facing the desk and, behind it, the floor-to-ceiling windows that had accorded Mr Thorn a wide view of the gravel courtyard, the long emerald lawn, the tree-lined driveway, the locked iron gate and the isolation that spread like a tattered flag beyond. The Urnfield was in the middle of nowhere - all the better to stay hidden, he thought. And the orphans had stayed hidden, for so long. Even once they had separated and they had drifted with the wind to their respective corners of the world, they had remained concealed.

Hidden so well only another orphan could find them.

Unwilling accomplice, Axel thought. _Collaborator_.

The mahogany door behind him unlocked with a click, and swung open to admit a group of figures. The snake-tongued rook, panicked, took flight, and Axel jumped to his feet and turned to look at the entrance as the man who called himself William Thorn stepped over the threshold, followed very shortly by his sister, her hands in fists by her sides as though expecting trouble. Axel's hazel eyes swept over her, searching for some sign of harm, but Zara just seemed suspicious. Which, he thought with relief, was pretty quintessentially Zara, even on the most normal of days. He stepped towards her quickly. "Zee."

And she had, he saw with some glimmer of amusement, performed her own split-second assessment of him and his well-being, as though ensuring William had not harmed him in the two days since Axel had first met him. She seemed to find no cause for concern, for she relaxed her hands, and quite simply said, "Grimalkin. What's happening?" She moved forward to clasp his hand and the two leaned in to touch shoulders - Zara had never really been one for hugging. Her hands were hot, Axel noted, burning up with the power his older sister contained, trapped within the very fabric of her nerves.

"If I could explain, I would," Axel replied, as the others followed Zara in with varied degrees of suspicion marking their faces. "All I can say is that we should probably hear this guy out." He released Zara's hand and turned to embrace Adrian. The older boy had always been a little shorter than Axel, but returned the hug with surprising strength. "Trust me, I was suspicious at first as well."

"Working with the enemy now, Ace?" Rez called languidly, as he moved from the door to drop into the armchair by the fire. "Fucking turncoat. I called it, you know. When we were eight."

"I am hardly," William was saying haughtily. "The _enemy_." He was standing by the bookshelves, with one hand touching the wooden surface. It was a position Mr Thorn had assumed often, Axel thought. The similarities were striking, when one knew to look.

"Whatever you say, Specs," Zara said, stepping back from Axel and folding her arms. With the defiance etched on her features, she cut a rather fearsome figure, Axel thought. Though an ordinary person might only perceive a young woman with piercing eyes and a little more muscle than perhaps was predictable, when Zara spoke the entire room seemed to vibrate with her words, silently asserting her strength and her willingness to right the moral compass. Adrian seemed to notice this as well - he put a hand on his sister's shoulder, silently urging her to keep her emotions in check lest her abilities wreak havoc. Zara's expression did not change, but the room did not seem quite so fraught with tenable tension when she spoke again. "Care to share with the class?"

Axel hadn't even noticed Leo was in the room until his older brother had slid past him, pausing only to ruffle Axel's dark hair with a playfully affectionate gesture. Leo hopped up onto Mr Thorn's desk and folded his legs, leaning forward to look at William with an openly expectant expression. He was followed by Vanya, who took a seat in the white chair; Essi wavered and looked at the black chair, and then settled onto the arm of the white one instead. Her dark eyes were unreadable as she folded her arms and stretched her long legs, looking more like some kind of spidery marionette suspended on the strings of something in the sky than a living, breathing girl. Vanya was a mere glimmer of brown eyes and brown skin beside her, less fully formed than than one of Adrian's shadows.

"That is," William said. "Kind of the idea, Number One."

Rez snorted. His silver hair glittered in the early dawn glow, like so much starlight. "Please, call her that again. I want to see what happens."

Leo's smile was vicious, but it was Adrian who spoke next. "You sent the messages," he said. It wasn't a question. He turned to Axel. "But you delivered them?"

Axel was keenly, painfully, agonisingly, aware of all eyes in the room falling upon him. He nodded. "Took me a while to find all you guys," he said softly. It had been painful to realise just how deeply his family had fractured, how far they had run from one another and their memories together. Even more so to realise what kind of lives they had been living since they had departed the Urnfield.

If he had to rank them, Axel would have said that Rez's eyes were the sharpest of all. "Why the fuck did you join up with this unreliable cunt?"

Axel looked at William, who had the decency to look abashed. "He made it very clear it was in my best interests. My _girlfriend_ _'s_ best interests."

William appeared almost affronted. In another situation, Axel would have found it mildly amusing the insult he seemed to be garnering from the idea. "I'm a little concerned you took that as a threat," he said mildly.

"It _was_ a threat."

"It was a _prediction_."

"You led us into a trap to protect some girl?" Vanya was always the most dangerous when his voice was soft like this. When they were younger, Rez had claimed Vanya had torn his vocal chords from his throat as a child and replaced them with broken glass; it was a good, if childish, description of the gruff quality Vanya's voice usually possessed.

Axel shook his head. "That's not..."

"Enough." Zara stepped forward. "We can sort out the family squabbles later. Whatever Axel's motivations, we're here now."

Adrian nodded. "I guess that means the floor is yours," he said to William.

"Don't waste our time," Leo added, his teeth very white and very sharp when he smiled. He sat with his forearms resting on his knees, silver winking at his fingers like something stolen.

"Very well." William did not, to Axel's disappointment, appear all that unnerved by the collection of orphans before him. His mistake, Axel thought Just one of them alone was destructive. The seven of them together? The word _apocalyptic_ came to mind. He glanced between Zara and Essi, and was glad to note that neither girl seemed to have relaxed much, despite William's half-hearted attempts to put them at ease. Though neither girl was much alike, their sororal bond was obvious in the near-identical ways they held themselves in the faces of apparent danger: folded arms, a cocked head, tension apparent in the lines of their shoulders.

At Adrian and Leo's words, the waist-coated man straightened up his posture, and flung out a hand. "Observe," he said simply.

The air before him began to scintillate and warp as though subjected to a haze of heat. The shimmer seemed to constrict and tighten and thicken, a strange cloud of chalky fog gathering from the nothingness of thin air. It spun in the air for a moment as William concentrated, only the slightest turn of his hand indicating the effort he was putting into the gesture. And from that mist the air coalesced even further, into a tenable, material shape that arced through the air towards the desk.

Adrian's brow creased. "Is that...?"

"A paper airplane," Leo said. " _Fascinating_. Now, my question is: can he make other things out of paper as well?"

Rez reached forward and plucked the paper airplane out of the air as it approached him, his long tan fingers quick and clever as he shook it out in a single gesture. "It appears to be some kind of communiqué," he said dryly. He turned the page over in his hand without attempting to read it, staring at the sheet with barely-concealed fascination. "This is... some kind of material temporal displacement?"

William nodded. "Precisely, Number Four. I pulled that from the past," he explained simply, looking at the unimpressed visages of Vanya and Zara. "From the night my father disappeared. From this very room."

He moved his arm minutely, so that the palm of his hand now faced the desk on which Leo was perched. In the same way that the sun filters through the clouds on an overcast day, the past filtered forth through the years and was projected onto the present - Axel could barely contain his unease as the spectre of Mr Thorn flickered into existence next to Essi, leaning on the desk so that his arm actually appeared to pass, ghost-like, through Leo's knee. Axel could remember William showing him this for the first time - he had thought that the image was so undeniably perfect and perfectly undeniable that it could not possibly be anything other than a true projection of the past.

He had known that he had missed Mr Thorn, but seeing him again, moving at least in the facsimile of life, had been more painful that he could have articulated.

And he could see how transfixing the image was for his siblings as well. Zara stepped forward, almost on reflex, her gray-green eyes searching for some flaw in the image, as though she were unwilling to believe the pain of the past seven years could so easily be rewound. Vanya put a hand on Essi's knee as though to restrain himself from rash action, apparently forgetting the bad blood between them for a single moment. Rez sat up straight and strained forward in the armchair, all pretense of laziness vanishing in a single focused instant. Leo tilted his head, as might a dog watching a cat, his expression morphing slowly into one of apprehension and interest. Adrian's lips parted in shock, surprise and regret etched across his face.

The phantom Mr Thorn turned towards the door and spoke without sound, his eyes serious and solemn. From the shadows that played across his features, Axel was quite sure that it was dusk. The image stepped back from his desk, and walked to stand before the window, shaking his head as he did so. He was, Axel thought, clearly lost deeply within his own mind, lost as only Mr Thorn could be. Axel could remember seeing similar expressions on the man when he was a child - sometimes Mr Thorn would go days without leaving the study, so intensely would he be considering a particular problem.

Behind him, unseen by the phantom Mr Thorn and observed only by the Urnfield orphans gathered in the present, the paper airplane arced through the air and appeared on the desk. Axel turned to gaze around the study, searching for the object's origin, but saw nothing out of place. William caught his eye, and shook his head. "It just _appears_ ," the younger Thorn said, sounding slightly put out.

Mr Thorn turned and spotted the page. He stepped forward and unfolded it just as Rez had - a single fluid motion, assertive and confident. His intelligent eyes scanned the words written there quickly, darting back and forth across the page as his expression gradually changed to one of... Axel hadn't fully realised before that the man who had raised him was _capable_ of that kind of pure, undiluted fear.

Mr Thorn stared at the page for a very long moment. It couldn't really have been much longer than a few seconds, but it seemed to stretch on forever, a single instant fractured into a thousand. Then he raised his head, and, quite deliberately, met Axel's eyes - as though he were somehow gazing through the years that separated him to truly _see_ him. Axel felt a chill run down his spine at the sheer focus and emotion in Mr Thorn's eyes. And then, without warning, the projected image suddenly distorted and cracked and then, with finality, dissipated into nothing once again, as would mist in sunlight.

Vanya's eyes narrowed and Zara turned to William. "What happened?"

William's eyebrows knitted together and he shook his head. He looked a lot like Mr Thorn when he did so, Axel thought; with every moment that passed, it appeared more and more believable that the two were related. "Isn't that the question of the day?" He lowered his hand. "To be frank, I have no idea. Something is blocking my abilities - some _one_ is hiding what happens next."

As though the Urnfield orphans needed to be told what happened next.

Rez turned the page over in his hand and read aloud. " _A bee circles a clover. A fisherman mends a glimmering net. Happy porpoises jump in the sea, By the rainspout, young sparrows are playing, and the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be_."

"Well," Zara said coldly. "If that isn't the prettiest nonsense I've heard all day."

"Czeslaw Milosz."

Axel was glad that he wasn't the only one who shot Essi a surprised look as the youngest orphan spoke; Rez also cast her a wry glance. Vanya, still not looking at her, nevertheless looked unsurprised at this particular contribution from Essi. Her voice was reluctant, as though the words were being torn from her by a violent force. The seventh sibling seemed to shrink even further into herself, but at Leo's nod, she continued.

"Czeslaw Milosz. He was a Polish poet." Essi cast her dark eyes about the room, as though searching for someone who knew what she was talking about. "He won the Nobel Prize in Literature, guys."

"He wrote _City Without a Name_ ," William added, and Essi glanced at him in surprise, almost taken aback by his two pennyworth. The ghost of appreciation flickered in her eyes.

"He did," she agreed. "But that quote comes from _A Song on the End of the World_."

"Ominous title," Leo said thoughtfully.

Rez turned the page over in his hands, his eyes narrowing in concentration. "This is from one of the books in the Urnfield library," he said thoughtfully. "One of the collections of poetry... clearly, Essi was the only one who bothered to read them."

Zara glanced at William. "I take it you looked into what the significance might be?"

William nodded, and pulled a book from the shelf behind him. He threw it to Adrian, who flicked it open. "The page was torn from that book. There's an address written on the fragment left behind." He looked at the group, his gaze grave. "I went out there once. There's... something about that place. You get within twenty miles, and you just have to turn back. It's like the world itself won't let you continue."

Adrian turned the book over in his hand. "An address? But who -"

Zara interrupted her brother with a brusque briskness. "Specs? You mind stepping out of the room, maybe?"

William blinked. "Sorry?"

Zara spread her hands. "If you're asking what I think you are - and I think you are asking what I think you are - I think that requires a little bit of discussion amongst ourselves, don't you?"

William frowned. "I am aware of the circumstances of your schism..."

"Then you should be aware that we are clearly choosing to cure our bad blood with copious, copious amounts of repression," Leo said sweetly.

Adrian smiled at his younger brother, and then nodded in agreement with Zara. "Family conference," he said, almost apologetically. "It's called democracy."

William sighed and conceded. "I'll step outside. Try not to kill one another while I'm gone."

Rez raised his eyebrows. "You really do ask too much of us."

The door had only just closed behind William when Zara turned to her siblings. Her long dark hair flicked about the sharp, furrowed features on her face as she looked at the family that had been reunited for the very first time in seven years. "Alright," she said, with the tone of unmistakeable authority. "I'm not the only who finds him _very_ irritating, right?"

Axel couldn't help but smile at her priorities. "Do you think he is telling the truth? That he's Mr Thorn's son?"

"Mr Thorn never mentioned a family," Vanya said dourly.

"The bastard never mentioned _not_ having a family," Rez added.

"Flawless logic as always, Fortune," Zara said darkly.

Rez raised his hands as though in surrender. "Blunt that edge a little bit, Zee? I'm just being realistic."

"Zara's always been a little bit happier dwelling in delusion," Vanya said, his voice cold and harsh.

Zara's gray-green eyes narrowed. "Of all the people to talk about _self-delusion_..."

Vanya stood. The worm-like thing under the skin of his cheek was writhing with a savagery; something with claws was crawling under the flesh of his forearm. "Think _very_ hard about what you think you're about to say, Thin Man."

"Alright, kids, you can stop fighting. You _both_ have enormous cocks." Rez stood up, pulling his tailored coat tightly around him, his white gloves almost luminescent in the dawn light. "You'd think seven fucking years would mature you even a fraction-"

"Stay out of it, King Midas," Zara said sharply. The air was rippling around her again now, all the atoms vibrating with the sheer ferocity of her anger. "You remember what happened. I'm not saying anything that isn't true-"

"It was hardly Vanya's fault," Leo said, his clever eyes darting from brother to sister and back again. "It wasn't really anyone's fault-"

"You always were too forgiving," Rez told Leo, his hazel eyes glittering as though in fever. " _Especially_ when it comes to Essi-"

Essi's dark eyes flicked to Rez, her resentment palpable. A new wound had opened at her lip, stretching earward in a gruesome approxiation of a half-smile. "I didn't _do_ anything..."

Vanya swung on her. His bitterness was almost a physical presence. His fury burst forth. "Don't _lie_."

Axel couldn't believe how little it took to have them at one another's throats again. As though nothing had changed. As though they were still young and scared. As though all the wounds were still fresh. _"Guys."_ No one was looking at him. He could have disappeared. He could have just _gone_ , returned to Brooke, left this all behind him.

And yet. This was his family. These were his brothers and sisters. And, almost despite himself, Axel loved them.

"Guys." Axel spoke through clenched teeth. "Can we relax? Just... for a single conversation."

"This isn't about us," Adrian added, his voice low and urgent. "This is about Mr Thorn. Can't we put aside our own petty fights for a single moment if it means finding him?"

There was a long silence. Zara took a deep breath and relaxed her hands, allowing all the tension and energy to leak out of the room once again. Vanya finally tore his eyes from Essi, and walked over towards the bookshelves, still obviously irate. Rez dropped back into his armchair, and leaned his head on his hand, looking acrimonious. Leo leaned back on his hands, his eyes distracted, his expression thoughtful. And Essi... well, Axel thought, when Essi lost control people tended to suffer. She didn't seem to have changed her expression throughout the entire conversation, but she did at last turn away from Vanya to look at Adrian and Axel with her usual imperceptible gaze.

"So. Does it matter if William is related to Mr Thorn or not?" Adrian continued, clearly eager to get them back onto track. "What matters is whether he was showing us the truth. If he really wants to help us find him."

Axel took a deep breath. "I think he does," he said. His siblings turned to look at him, and he was struck once again by how much he had missed this weird, motley group of odd boys and strange girls, bound by ash and dust and tragedy and destruction. And it hit him for the thousandth time since they had gathered in this study that there was little he wanted more than to stay in the Urnfield for forever, just his family and the people he cared most about around him. "I've been around him for a few days now. And I think he's genuine."

Vanya looked irascible. "I thought you said he threatened your girlfriend?"

"And you kill people for a living," Axel said sharply. Adrian's face fell and Vanya's eyes darkened and Essi's jaw clenched almost imperceptibly. "Something's coming. Something big. I won't forgive him for what he said, but... he thought the end justified the means."

There was silence for a long moment before Zara nodded. "I don't know about you," she said. "But I'm going to trust Grimalkin's judgment."

"At least this way we'll know who to blame when it all goes to shit," Rez agreed lazily.

"So the next question is," Zara said. "Finding Mr Thorn. That poem, Chisle... Shelo..."

"Czeslaw Milosz," Essi supplied helpfully.

"Yeah," Zara said. "Him."

"That was Miss Loss' favourite poet," Axel said suddenly. And again, all eyes on him. "I remember... she used to read that book."

"Miss Loss?" Zara repeated. "Our Miss Loss?"

Axel met his older sister's gaze and nodded. "I looked for her when I was delivering the messages to all of you. Couldn't find her, at least not easily."

Adrian was gazing at the book. "This address," he said to Vanya. "You know it?"

Vanya shook his head. "That's a new one."

Zara peered over Adrian's shoulder. Even from here, Axel could still feel the slight haze of radiation that surrounded her. "It's about two thousand miles away," she said. "Call it a day's drive."

Leo slapped his knees and jumped to his feet in a single smooth motion, the desk creaking with the sudden movement. " _Well_ ," he said. "Are you guys thinking what I'm thinking?" He fired finger-guns in the direction of Essi and Vanya. "Family road trip, anyone?"

* * *

 **The Urnfield Orphans  
Number One: **The Thin Man - Zahara "Zara" Al-Yatim **  
Number Two:** The Grimalkin - Axel "Ace" von Asche **  
Number Three:** The Abyss - Ivan "Vanya" Kinzhalov **  
Number Four:** The Fortune - Rezar "Rez" Orval **  
****Number Five:** The Haruspex - Leontios "Leo" Kelly **  
Number Six:** The Shadow - Adrian "Fire Kid" Zavala **  
Number Seven:** The Butcher - Esther "Essi" Graves

 **Number Zero:** The Prodigal - William "Specs" Thorn

* * *

 **Ooops, okay, so I lied. At least now we've met all the siblings, and hopefully got an idea for their shared dynamic. Please let me know what you think!**

 **I've seen some questions in the review about what their powers are, which of the siblings are the eldritch twins (!), even what happened to the other Forsaken. I'd like to just reassure you that it's all still to be answered in the later chapters. Thank you all so much for the time you have taken to read and review!**

 **Now I am genuinely gonna take a day's break. The next chapter will finally see the siblings in action, and hopefully shed a bit of light on what happened seven years ago to break them up.**


	6. 005

_In the darkness before dinner comes_  
 _Sometimes I can feel the itch_  
 _Seems you can't get any more than half free_  
 _Step onto the front porch and suck the air deep inside of me_  
 _I got a cold mind to go tripping 'cross that thin line_  
 _I'm sick of doin' straight time_

\- Bruce Springsteen

* * *

"There is... _nothing_ left in this fridge," Kelly said. He sounded disappointed but unsurprised. Light still spun from the bits of broken glass in his hair. It fractured the dawn into a thousand colours, like a kaleidoscope. His hands were utterly uncalloused; his frame was scarecrow-thin; his tan skin seemed somewhat anemic. Seven years ago, Ivan thought, he would have been roused with concern for the other orphan's well-being. Now, he found himself focusing on the annular cicatrix that marked the centre of Kelly's forehead. It looked like the bullseye of a target. Seven years on, and it had healed into a small reminder of what had happened to the Urnfield and those within its perimeters. "Of all the ways I thought I'd die, I never expected starvation."

"Would you _want_ to eat anything from that fridge?" Zavala said dubiously. He was leaning against the stove this time around. Nice to see a little bit of variety, Ivan thought mutedly. The others were in their usual positions around the kitchen; Essi had curled up on the window seat, her gloved hands resting on her knees. Her expression was mutinous. Her eyes did not leave Thorn as he moved around the kitchen. The newcomer didn't, Ivan thought with amusement, seem to know where to sit or stand. "I mean... it would have been there for seven years."

Kelly shrugged. "Life's short and I'm hungry."

Orval smirked. When he tilted his chair back, very fine gold powder fell in little showers from the hem of his long coat. Expensive, Ivan thought. Armani, perhaps. Orval had developed a fine taste in his time away. He was, for once, clean-shaven. The silver of his hair still struck Ivan as unnecessarily ostentatious. "I think Leo might be onto something." He cocked his head. It was a bird-like gesture, shared by nearly all of the orphans. "All of these superpowers," he said dryly. "And no one can manage to magic up a fucking pizza?"

Al-Yatim didn't seem to find this all too amusing. Ivan wasn't sure she had unfolded her arms since they had regrouped in the kitchen. She certainly hadn't changed her expression far from a saturnine look. Unlike Al-Yatim, Zavala smiled slightly at Orval's words. "Sounds like your time to shine, Axel."

Von Asche's usual spot was at the bottom of the table. He almost precisely mirrored Al-Yatim. The stud in his ear flashed argent as he turned to look at Zavala. He had grown out his braids so that they met in a single short ponytail. Ivan thought he looked the most healthy of any of the orphans. "You think ordering _pizza_ will avoid starting fights?"

"He's got a point," Kelly agreed. "Disagreeing on toppings was really what drove us apart in the first part."

Ivan couldn't believe they were speaking about such trite nonsense. Today, he thought, of all days. Truth be told - he couldn't fully believe he was back here in the first place. He had told himself he would never return to the Urnfield. It was a strange paradox of familiar faces made unfamiliar anew, unfamiliar people in familiar situations. And if there was any situation familiar to the orphans of the Urnfield, it was mortal danger. Axel had said he thought something big was coming. Thorn had remained stubbornly silent on what precisely that might be.

Ivan had a few ideas on the topic. Putting them forward though, Ivan mused, would mean speaking to Thorn. Ivan wasn't entirely sure even the truth was worth that. The newcomer put him on edge. Maybe it was his analytical bluntness. Maybe it was his waistcoat-and-watch-and-gun ensemble. Maybe it was the way he looked at the six Forsaken in front of him, like so much meat. And now, looking at Thorn, Ivan realised that the other man didn't even seem to have a heartbeat. At the very least, it was so slow as to seem utterly imperceptible. Some extension of the time-warping ability he had early displayed? That would suggest Thorn was one of the Forsaken, like the orphans themselves.

And yet he had claimed to be the Benefactor's son. That suggested blood-and-bone, not ash-and-dust.

As though he had sensed Ivan's thoughts, Thorn turned to look at him. The strange things that dwelled within Ivan writhed and twisted without rest. Even after so many years with inhuman creatures and phantom _things_ dwelling under his skin, Ivan was not entirely accustomed to the sensation. And yet, Ivan met Thorn's eyes without hesitation. It was almost a challenge. "Penny for your thoughts, Number Three?"

"Don't call him that," Essi said. Her voice was distracted. The words sounded almost unintentional. It was as though she had spoken on instinct.

"What name would he prefer?" Thorn began, and then paused. He turned and looked at Essi. Not _at_ Essi, Ivan was relieved to see, but past Essi, through the bay windows at which she sat. His expression altered abruptly to one of concern. "...were any of you expecting company?"

Zavala looked at von Asche and von Asche looked at Kelly and Kelly shook his head. "Well," he said mildly. "This doesn't sound good."

"There's something coming... a group of men, violent men, soldiers. SWAT-type gear, I think." Thorn shook his head. "They're hostile," he added helpfully.

" _Fantastic_." Orval looked at Al-Yatim. "Hear that, Zee? They're hostile."

"I don't see anyone," Essi said dubiously.

"We've got about two minutes," Thorn added.

"Listen to Mister NORAD over here," Al-Yatim murmured under her breath. She pushed back her chair. She stood up. Her hair swayed. "How hostile are we talking?"

"...very?"

"Supremely helpful." Al-Yatim shook her head. "Alright, boys and girls, let's..." Ivan's knives were in his hands before Al-Yatim could finish her sentence. She looked at him. She nodded. "The Abyss has the right spirit," she said amusedly.

"I stick to my strengths," Ivan replied.

"Few that they are," Al-Yatim agreed smoothly. She glanced at the others. "Ready for a gentle workout?"

Orval rolled his eyes as he took his shoes off the table. "You bastards are asking me to break a seven year streak," he said darkly.

Kelly clapped him on the back. "It was inevitable," he said cheerfully. "Who's got a gun I can use?" He pointed. "Specs?"

Irritation crossed Thorn's face. "That name is sticking, huh?" He shook his head. "The revolver stays with me."

Kelly raised an eyebrow. "Sharing is caring, my love."

Ignoring the fifth sibling, von Asche looked at Al-Yatim. "What are your orders, Supreme General?"

She scowled. "I'm not the leader here."

"Agree to disagree." Orval stood. "I can imagine the gist of it: have powers, use powers, dispose of hostiles. Was I close?"

Al-Yatim glanced between the group. Faint trace of amusement in her eyes. "That's the beginning and end of it. Gloves off, kids."

Essi hadn't moved from the window seat. Her gloves were still on. She looked unlikely to agree.

"Abyss and Butcher will clear the foyer as they enter," Al-Yatim continued. "Any stragglers, Fortune and I will handle them. Shadow, hang back and keep us camouflaged. Grimalkin?"

Von Asche nodded. "Already ahead of you."

"Try and keep Leo alive, if you can," Orval added. "After fifteen years, he's kind of starting to grow on me."

"And as for Specs..." Al-Yatim paused. She glanced at Thorn. She shrugged. "If he dies, he dies."

"I don't know about you guys," Kelly said. "But all this talk of death and destruction... I feel ten years old again."

Ivan turned towards the door. Two minutes, Thorn had said. That had been about two minutes ago. They would be heading straight into the milieu. _Hostiles_ was hardly descriptive. Were they talking paramilitary? He found himself tossing his knives in his hands. He could not help but relish the taste of a fight on the air. All the beasts in his veins and his nerves were turning and twisting. He hadn't fully noticed how stressful it was to be around the others again. To be around Essi.

And like the devil herself -

"Van," Essi said softly. She must have left the kitchen just after him. There was something plaintive about her. She was like a wraith. She trailed after him at a slight distance. Her shoelaces trailed behind her in turn.

He couldn't contain his words. "You _left_."

"We _all_ left." A note of irritation laced her voice.

"I'm not talking about that, and you know it." He stopped at the top of the stairs. The foyer was still empty. He turned to face the other orphan. Obviously they still had a little time.

Essi pressed her lips together. Her dark eyes were very still. "I know."

"And?"

She shrugged.

"That's what I thought," Ivan said.

Her cheekbones were hollow. Her skin was smooth and bronze. Her hair was silky and dark, lightless. She had angular eyes, like a fox, and very sharp cuspids, like little serrated daggers. She showed them now, laughing without mirth or sound.

"That's kind of what I do. I run away. I hurt people. Occasionally I watch TV."

"E." Ivan knew this was Essi's idea of an olive branch.

She raised her gloved hands. There was a thread unraveling at her wrist. "I'm not... I don't want you to feel sorry for me." There was a new bruise growing just under her eye. It hadn't been there a moment ago. "I'm not asking for pity, Van."

"Then what?"

Essi hesitated. She shook her head. "I don't know." Her voice was soft. "I just want things to be normal again."

Ivan's gaze skipped across her. "Like it used to be?"

"Like it used to be."

He was silent for a moment. Then -

"Anything good on TV these days?"

The ghost of mirth in her eyes. "Reruns."

"Ah," Ivan said. "Shame."

He glanced at the foyer. He glanced at his watch. He glanced at Essi.

"That's been more than two minutes," he said. They began to walk down the stairs.

"Little bit more." Essi toyed with the wrist of her glove. She took a deep breath. She took it off. Her expression suggested it was comparable to ripping off skin. "Keep a distance," she warned. As though he had forgotten what she could do. As though he was, or had ever, been afraid of her.

"I can handle this," Ivan said. "If you want me to. You don't have to..." He gestured to her hands, one gloved, one ungloved. "You don't have to."

Essi's eyes were like the night sky itself. She stepped forward. She brushed one covered fingertip across the worm jerking in his throat. Just under the thinnest part of the skin. "Wouldn't be fair," she said softly.

"Yeah," Ivan replied, his voice low. "Because we care so much about being fair."

Essi's lips quirked, and then the front door opened and men poured into the room. Six in all, Ivan saw. Combat gear. Military issue. Not dissimilar to that used by SHIELD. The height of subtlety, he thought. They had guns. They wouldn't have the chance to use them.

He spun his knife in his hand. Threw the first one - and it flew true, as it usually did. There was a gap in their masks for visibility. A slit just wide enough to see out of. A slit just wide enough to fit a blade through. And Ivan - well, Ivan never missed.

A second man closed in. Accordingly, Ivan spun his second knife. Before he could use it, Essi had moved past him, quietly and assuredly. She put her ungloved hand to the hostile's throat. She found a gap in the gear to touch bare skin. One eye fluttered, as though considering blinking. And then she drew her thumb across the hostile's neck, as abruptly as Ivan might draw a knife.

The man's head fell from his body and it was not long until his body fell as well.

From their body language, Ivan thought, clearly whoever had hired them had not warned them who or what they would be dealing with.

To their credit, they did not run.

Essi turned as another garbed figure approached. She met them with a hand flat on their chest. This time she did not bother to seek skin. And again the fluttering eye. And just like that, the man's chest caved in as suddenly and abruptly as if he had been hit by a train. Even a few feet away, Ivan could hear every rib snapping. There was a rupturing sound, like something fleshy and bloody being torn and rendered. Essi made it look so effortless.

Hurting people was second nature to her by now.

A brush of her fingertip across the third man's face crushed his zygomatic and ripped his skin as surely as a blade would. As he fell, Essi stepped back. She put her hand into the shape of a gun. She had a wry look on her face. The next man approached, gun raised. She grabbed its barrel, forced it upwards, spun under his reach. She put the tip of her finger against his temple, only barely touching the man. And she mimed firing.

The man's blood and brains exploded from him like they had developed a sudden enmity with the inside of his skull.

The fifth man went for her when he thought she wasn't looking.

Ivan put a hand on the wall beside him. He felt all of its disparate threads. Every strand of reality that made it _exist_ , here and now. Every individual grain of world it contained. And he forced them aside. He did it with an ease that spoke of long experience. And in so forcing, all of his own strands attempted to dissipate, to separate and evaporate and mingle, indistinguishable, among the rest.

It took effort to keep himself together. It always did. But now that he had identified the fault lines in the world, he could spot exactly where to make the incision. And he did so - tearing a hole in the very fabric of reality, just where it was thinnest, between Essi and the man approaching. The void opened so close to the man it did not afford him an opportunity to stop. It swallowed him whole.

Ivan took a deep breath. He didn't even need to move his hands. With all the things within him twitching and struggling, Ivan sealed the cavity in reality once again.

There was a crash behind him. Ivan turned to see a man in camouflage tumble down the stairs. He landed hard on his knees. When the man raised his hands to the light, Ivan saw that they had been transmuted into gold. Solid, rigid gold. The transition from gold to flesh was abrupt. A solid line at mid-forearm delineated the two. The expression of horror on the man's face was not something Ivan was comfortable glimpsing. It was strange and eerie to see a man break in front of you. Ivan didn't think he would ever get used to it.

"You missed one," Orval called from the top of the stairs, his voice dark and resentful.

"We had to leave one for you," Essi replied. "Wouldn't have been fair otherwise."

Ivan cast her an amused look. He stooped to pick up a fallen gun. Pointing it at Orval, he pulled the trigger - and smoke poured from its muzzle. No flash, he thought, almost smug. No bang. And certainly no bullet. Undoing reality was difficult. Now there was something sharp pressing against the skin of his stomach, like the thing within wanted to claw its way out. But he couldn't deny it had its benefits.

"One day," Orval said cynically. "You're gonna fuck up your little parlour trick and shoot me in the goddamn face."

"The day can't come too soon," Ivan replied, and tossed Orval the gun. "How many others?"

"Adrian and Zara caught three," Orval replied, stripping the gun apart as if by instinct. "Creative bastards tried coming in from the roof." What had once been bullets fell as ash in his hands. A legacy of Ivan's interference. The magazine dissipated into golden dust as Orval touched it, unable to retain its integrity. "I believe you'd call them flash-boiled." He threw back to Ivan what few firearm components still existed. "And William seems to have handled one. Ace reckons that's all of them, though. He's checking their cars."

Essi was pulling back on her gloves. Her use of her abilities had left little bruises flowering along her temples, in varying shades of violet and emerald and teal. Ivan said, "The radioactive girl wasn't lying when she called it a gentle workout."

Orval was pulling back on his gloves. Ivan caught sight of one of Orval's fingers as he did so. The nail of the little finger and the knuckle below glittered gold. It looked like the newly metamorphosed hands of the man on his knees. Orval caught Ivan looking, and asked with his eyes for silence. Ivan wasn't inclined to deny him his secrets.

"So that makes ten in all," Al-Yatim said. She emerged with Adrian from the shadows. "I'm almost insulted, truth be told."

Kelly disagreed. "Twelve," he said, walking down the hall. He had a certain zest in his step. And he was, Ivan saw, entirely drenched in blood and viscera. He looked like he had bathed in the stuff. Even without powers, Ivan thought, Kelly was an absolute lunatic. "Still rather insulting..."

"Twelve," Al-Yatim conceded. "And one left awake and alive." She indicated the man with the golden hands. "Reckon we have a quick chat with him - make sure he's got nothing to do with our new friend, Thorn Junior - and then get gone." She looked expectantly at Essi and Ivan as she spoke.

"Is it just me," Orval said to no one in particular. "Or is it _really fucking weird_ that we have designated torturers in this family?"

"We're not going to torture him," Essi said firmly.

Ivan glanced at her, eyebrow raised. "We're gonna torture him a little."

"You're going to have a nice chat," Al-Yatim agreed, her voice stern. Her face was a little more wan than usual. Her hands shook minutely from her earlier exertion. "And that's all."

Ivan rolled his eyes. "You're no fun," he said dryly, and was rewarded for the first time in seven year's with the starlight-bright opaline-shine of Essi's smile. "No fun at all."

* * *

 **The Urnfield Orphans**  
 **Number One:** The Thin Man - Zahara "Zara" Al-Yatim  
 **Number Two:** The Grimalkin - Axel "Ace" von Asche  
 **Number Three:** The Abyss - Ivan "Vanya" Kinzhalov  
 **Number Four:** The Fortune - Rezar "Rez" Orval  
 **Number Five:** The Haruspex - Leontios "Leo" Kelly  
 **Number Six:** The Shadow - Adrian "Fire Kid" Zavala  
 **Number Seven:** The Butcher - Esther "Essi" Graves

 **Number Zero:** The Prodigal - William "Specs" Thorn

* * *

 **The promised touch of action! In addition, we get to see a few of the characters showing their powers a little more clearly. Please read and review and let me know what you think!**

 **A quick note: the writing is a little more stilted in this chapters. You might have noticed many short, choppy sentences - this was intended to show Vanya's way of thinking, but I understand it is a big difference from earlier chapters and their styles.**

 **Next chapter: some reminiscing and a nice chat.**


	7. 006

_I lit up from Reno_  
 _I was trailed by twenty hounds_  
 _Didn't get to sleep that night_  
 _Till the morning came around_  
 _I ran into the Devil, babe_  
 _He loaned me twenty bills_  
 _I spent that night in Utah_  
 _In a cave up in the hills_  
 _I set out running but I take my time_  
 _A friend of the devil is a friend of mine_  
 _If I get home before daylight_  
 _I just might get some sleep tonight_

\- Grateful Dead

* * *

Truth be told, Leo didn't remember much of what had happened to split up the family that terrible evening.

He imagined that wasn't all that unusual, given that he had been shot in the head that night.

What little he could recall, he rather wished he could not. His thoughts were as moths, fluttering against the cage of his skull, wet and weakly turning in a mass of movement, feeble in their death throes. They turned over one another, scattered and roiled, an inextricable mass, no single one distinct - and yet all so encompassing it did not allow the intrusion of any other idea. And if his thoughts were moths then his memories were tattered and anemic, faltering and falling and never quite managing to rise to the forefront. It left his mind hollow, light. Leo wasn't sure he could entirely blame that on the bullet. He certainly couldn't blame it for the insomnia - seven years, he thought, and he could count the full nights of sleep on one hand.

Essi and Kinzhalov's voices were very soft behind the wall of the study. Almost soothing, Leo thought dryly, and yet not quite. He didn't think Esther or Kinzhalov were people you felt comfortable around without practise and long exposure. He wasn't sure Kinzhalov was something with which he would ever feel entirely at ease.

So if those were moths and if those were thought, then in his blood lay the spiders, cocooned and fitfully sleeping after their dusk-time revels across his nerves, his veins, his heartstrings, the seams of himself. He imagined it was like the things within Kinzhalov, the creatures that grew stronger and more bold with every use of the reality-warper's ability - but in Leo's case, the spiders within were not a manifestation of the corruption his abilities were wreaking on his body, but something like the ghost-memory of what his power had once been. He itched to use his gifts. There was an urge in the marrow of his bones, an instinct in his arteries and all his fault-lines, to do things he could no longer dream of doing. A phantom limb, he thought.

Earlier he had hefted axe in hand and made bloody butchery of a matter he had once dreamed legerdemain. The men invading the Urnfield had not been expecting to encounter Forsaken, he knew. They had thought to find children, vulnerable young men and scared young women, easily corralled and easily obliterated. It was a legacy of Mr Thorn's dubious training regime that even Leo and a mere half-sharp hatchet had managed to handle two trained paramilitaries. You know how it is, he thought wryly. You must kill your darlings. Kill your darlings.

Kill, darling.

Where were those spiders now?

Every time he ceased to be aware of their presence, he wondered if his abilities had reappeared. He _feared_ that they had. And yet, here and now, he felt no different. Still Leo. Ragged threads of sanity still intact. No longer further frayed by his gifts. There were smaller miracles.

The door to the study clicked open and Essi stepped out, pulling back on her gloves. Leo couldn't help but gaze at her. For every wound that closed quickly on her face, another opened up anew, marking her golden skin with long silver scars and deep crimson gashes, multi-coloured bruises opening up like flowers, swelling on her jaw marking a fracture borne of nothing.

"He's talking," The smoky, venom-laced voice of the Butcher was soft, conjuring thought of arsenic, of hemlock. Poisons all. She _looked_ poisonous: lips like mistletoe berries, hair like cyanide, skin like taipan. Aposematic girl, Leo thought. The most venomous things in the world were brightly colored to warn you away from them.

He could not help but quirk a smile. "He only agreed to talk if you were out of the room, huh?"

Essi shrugged. "I'm off-putting, I think."

"Oh," Leo said. "Very off-putting. The absolute worst of us."

It was one of the few memories he retained of that night, Essi lying in a pool of blood, her dark hair a cloud of dark tendrils and her eyes staring, staring, staring, speckled with starlight. She had been utterly unmoving. Her skin had been cold. She had not drawn breath.

She took a deep breath now, as though searching for fresh air. If you could call the air in this room fresh, Leo thought, mottled as it was with the dappled half-light of dawn, weighed leaden with dust. "Where's the boss?"

"Downstairs," Leo replied calmly. "Dealing with the bodies." That was Zara to a fault - act first, debrief later. "You wreaked a lot of havoc, my darling." He could not quite manage to restrain the pride in his voice.

A shadow flitted across Essi's face. "Yes," she said softly. "Didn't we all."

Some more so than others, Leo thought. Certainly, out of the seven orphans, some tended to be a little more destructive on the few occasions that they relaxed their careful discipline. Another half-there, half-gone memory from that night: a field of ash and broken stone, what had once been men fallen on what had once been knees, a circle of utter ruination, and at its centre - Zara the Thin Man, her face etched in a mask of utter grief and regret, her hands still splayed and faintly smoking. Her dark hair had been strewn about her face in a violent halo, her eyes bright as though in fever.

"For a good cause," Leo assured his friend now. "The best of causes."

"Protecting the family?" Essi said, dubiously. "You're sure that's a good thing?"

"You're not?"

Essi shrugged. "We're bad people."

" _You're_ a bad person," Leo corrected her gently. "The rest of us are just flawed assholes." And then he had to duck, because Essi had picked up a pen from the desk beside her and flung it at him with enough force to stick nib-first in the wooden surface of the bookshelf.

"Be _nice_ ," she said.

"Make me."

She made a very un-Essi-like face, and Leo had to smile. He hopped down from his perch on the shelf and walked over to her, peering past her thin frame to see that the door of the study was still closed. Kinzhalov would still be talking to the man with the golden hands, he thought, if talking could be a violent act. Most acts were, when the Abyss was involved. Leo rather thought it seemed as though Kinzhalov and all the things within it fed off the chaos that a confrontation birthed.

"You okay?" he said, a little softer, stepping closer to her. She seemed to flinch as he did so - as a rule, the Butcher did not allow people to come close to her, as though for fear their blood might boil in their veins from mere proximity, that their skin would slough from their bones if she offered them a stray glance. After a moment, she paused, held herself in check, and flashed an expression that was neither a grimace nor a smile. Her gloved hands were very still. Using her abilities were second nature for her now, he saw, same as it was for Kinzhalov. It wasn't even exertion any more - just corruption, a slow and inevitable degradation of their bodies and souls with every use of their abilities. It didn't take a genius to see the blood-shot of her eyes, the way her skin sprouted new injuries of its own will, as though her powers had driven inwards to indiscriminately seek pain where they could find it.

"What answer were you expecting?" she replied wryly, and then both of them nearly jumped as someone abruptly spoke from beside them.

"Good news and bad news."

It was Ace, his beanie dusted with the dew-damp of hazy rain, his brown skin glistening slightly with the effort of the jump. His upper lip was still speckled with the rusty vestiges of a nosebleed from earlier in the day; he kept his hands in the pockets of his hoody. Leo almost berated himself for so losing concentration that Ace could make the unobserved leap. Mr Thorn had observed once, when they were very young, that it was as though Ace only existed when he was in front of you. Ace rarely could use his abilities around the orphans, so accustomed were they to maintaining vigilance on their surroundings - it was a badge of pride among the family, Leo thought, the longer you could go, crippling him like that.

Kinzhalov had held the record until seven years ago. Kneeling over Essi's corpse - well, Leo thought, it would have been only natural not to closely observe your surroundings. Even Kinzhalov, strange and cold as it was, might be forgiven such an omission. Ace had flitted about quite untethered that night. None of the orphans had really been in a position to maintain focus.

"Please," Essi said dryly now. "Don't keep us in suspense."

Ace ran a hand along the fabric of his hat. "Alright. We've dealt with the bodies."

"Good news," Leo said helpfully.

"We don't seem to have a method of transport," Ace added.

"Bad news," Leo continued. "Have you _forgotten_ the method of transport I helpfully left in the wall?"

"It literally became a _part_ of the house, Leo." Ace chuckled under his breath. "I don't think we'll be able to get anywhere fast."

"It's the thought that counts," Essi said soothingly, her gloved hand patting his elbow very gently, very hesitantly, before she stepped past him. "We really appreciate the ice-cream van."

"You're very welcome," Leo said smoothly. "I do what I can."

"Our golden-handed friend hasn't been helpful," Kinzhalov added abruptly, shutting the door to the study behind it. It stepped into the library, its dark eyes casting about with an uneasy mood stirring within. "Where's Thin Man?"

"He's not talking?" Ace answered its question with one of his own. "Lost your touch, Vanya?"

"He's talking," Kinzhalov said shortly. Its hands were bruised along the knuckles; its dark hair was tousled as though it had not spent the last half an hour interrogating a man, but having a nap. Leo thought that ironically Kinzhalov probably looked a little worse for the wear than the man it had just tortured. The beauty of having Essi around was that pain didn't have to last very long, if you didn't want it to. He doubted the man with the golden hands retained a single wound from the morning's events. "Talking's not the problem."

Ace raised his eyebrows. "He won't say who hired them?"

"He doesn't seem to _know_ ," Kinzhalov replied bitterly.

Ace rolled his eyes. "The more I learn about these guys, the more insulted I am that they thought they could take us," he mumbled softly, almost as though he had forgotten that the others were within earshot. "Alright." He shook his head. "I'll let Zara know."

He stepped out of Leo's field of vision; when Leo turned again to check for his brother, Ace was already gone.

Unseen, Leo thought, and therefore unreal.

It seemed almost a fitting metaphor for the way the siblings had existed over the past seven years. Separate from one another, out of sight and out of mind and, in Leo's case, a little out of their minds, utterly unseen and utterly unreal. Leo could remember climbing onto the roof of a building in Manhattan, about three years back, when the phantom urge to use his powers had been at their very worst, incapacitating in their totality. He had stepped to the edge of the parapet and he had looked out at all the golden lights of the city, silver over the water, red where they touched the sky, a tiny faux-starscape.

Any one of those lights could have been his brother or sister. More than one, or none at all. His siblings could have been long dead, or long emigrated, or trapped somewhere behind concrete and iron. And he would never have known. He would have existed in blissful, powerless ignorance, right until the moment death came for him.

And instead. Here he was.

He brushed his fingertips across the healed scar on his forehead. Shot in the head, he thought again, with a wry smile. Death would have to come for the Urnfield orphans in their sleep - they would fight too hard to be taken any other way.

* * *

 **The Urnfield Orphans**  
 **Number One:** The Thin Man - Zahara "Zara" Al-Yatim  
 **Number Two:** The Grimalkin - Axel "Ace" von Asche  
 **Number Three:** The Abyss - Ivan "Vanya" Kinzhalov  
 **Number Four:** The Fortune - Rezar "Rez" Orval  
 **Number Five:** The Haruspex - Leontios "Leo" Kelly  
 **Number Six:** The Shadow - Adrian "Fire Kid" Zavala  
 **Number Seven:** The Butcher - Esther "Essi" Graves

 **Number Zero:** The Prodigal - William "Specs" Thorn

* * *

 **Short, sweet and to the point - I don't think I have the hang of writing Leo just yet, so sorry for the brevity. Thanks a million for all of your reviews! It means the world to me. Please know that I read every single one and take them all into account when writing the next chapter, so if you have any concerns, let me know.**

 **Let me know what you think! Who are your favourite characters, your favourite narrators? Did Leo's little flashbacks answer some questions, or create more confusion? When am I gonna stop procrastinating studying for my exams? ? ?**


	8. 007

_And all the towns and people seem to fade into a bad dream_  
 _And the steel rails still ain't heard the news_  
 _The conductor sings his songs again  
The passengers will please refrain_  
 _This train has got the disappearing railroad blues_  
 _Good morning, America. How are you?_  
 _Say, don't you know me? I'm your native son_  
 _I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done_

\- Arlo Guthrie

* * *

In the cracked-tile flickering-light bathroom of the Urnfield, William Thorn looked into the mirror and found reflected a figure dressed, as he was always dressed, flawlessly, with the formal, decorous mien of a man destined someday to be a king.

He had managed to avoid getting blood on his shirt. He counted that a small victory.

He carefully returned his revolver to its typical holster, attached to his right leg as it always was. Reaching down to do so drew the light to his glimmering black cuff links, vaguely rakishly rookish in appearance. He wore a starched white shirt and a jacket that had either been tailored or stolen, so expensive the fabric. His shoes clicked, authoritatively, as he stepped out of the bathroom and walked down the hall towards the small congregation of Forsaken at the back door of the building. A strange group of even stranger people, he mused. He had known that, given their _unconventional_ upbringing, he should expect some... quirks. His preliminary research into them, and their lives with his father, had given him some idea of what he was facing. And yet - they managed, almost stubbornly, to avoid even the lowest of expectations. It was applaudable, in its own weird way. He was almost certain the one designated Number Five was actually some literal form of deranged.

The thought occurred to him,quite abruptly, that perhaps all of them were deranged. As he spotted what had drawn the group to the threshold of the backyard, although it took him a moment or two to realize exactly what it was. He lingered at the back of the group, just behind Numbers One through Four, and cast his eyes in the same direction they faced. Quadruped, he thought, four long, furred legs tipped in razor-sharp talons like that of a bird of prey. A skinny, scarred body that was long and twisted, like a spine with scoliosis. A pointed, angular head like that of a requiem shark, the edges of its mouth stretching ear-to-ear to reveal a vast array of scalpel-sharp teeth, at least one hundred in all, row hidden behind row, leaving only the tiniest of space for a forked tongue to writhe uneasily in its maw.

It was, William thought, a hideous wretched thing that should not be permitted to exist. You could almost smell it wafting from them: it had no place in this world, or in any other. Even William, who prided himself on analysis and rationale, could not help but call it what it was: _wrong_. It was something in his gut, irrational and irrefutable, which said so.

"Gravy!" Number Five crowed unexpectedly, almost directly in William's ear, and bounced past him to scoop the twisted abomination into his blood-stained arms. "Oh, _sweetie_ , _there_ you are, I've missed you." He put his face disturbingly close to its teeth to cuddle it; all the while, its eyes remained pointedly fixed on William himself.

"Gravy?" William said, disbelieving. He didn't intend to say it - the words spilled from him, unbidden and uncalled for. The name was almost twee. It was certainly far too adorable to attach to such a horrifically disfigured creature. This was a _Maul_ or a _Ripper_ or a _Diablo_. Not a _Gravy_.

"It's just a nickname," Number Five said, quite contentedly. He sounded surprising peaceable for a man with a monster climbing over him, as though intent on taking refuge within his curly hair or killing him. The thing had dug its serrated black talons into the orphan's red checked shirt and the tan skin of his neck, its razor fangs snapping and gnashing savagely only the slightest hair's breadth from the bare flesh of his throat. "It's short for Esther Graves."

"You named that... _thing_ after your little sister?"

"Other way around," Seven said lightly. William hadn't heard her approach, but held himself very carefully as the one they called the Butcher ghosted past him, her dark hair skating over the sleeve of his shirt. She left the scent of sweet cigar smoke and vanilla tea and old parchment in her wake as she walked over to Number Five. Seven held her gloved hand out to the monstrosity, as though to allow it to sniff her, though William could not identify any olfactory organs on the beast. He wasn't entirely certain he could identify most of the features on the creature, however - even what he believed to be its eyes, small and black and beadlike, appeared blind.

Number One turned to look at William. In the early morning light, the sunshine caught the strands of dark brown hair that hung loosely around her broad oval face and fractured its sheen into a thousand tiny glowing diamonds. Her olive bomber jacket had been singed at the hem over the course of the dawn as she employed her abilities; her combat boots still bore the legacy of the hostiles' blood and the violence that had drawn it out. "The cat got named first," she said dryly.

" _That_ ," William said firmly. "Is not a cat."

"It used to be," Number One said resignedly. "The Abyss... is not great with animals."

Number Three cast her a wry look, but it was not entirely as antagonistic as it could have been. "Understatement?" he said in that characteristic whiskey-and-gunpowder murmur of his. At some point in the morning, he had shed his black turtleneck in favor of a plain white t-shirt that left his lean, scarred arms bare. William wasn't entirely sure a man with the intensity of Number Three had any business looking so casual. There was something wrong about the idea of a Number Three that seemed so approachable - almost as wrong, William thought wryly, as the existence of Gravy, the cat-that-was-not-a-cat.

"Oh," Number One agreed. "Understatement."

William was really fully internalizing the idea that Axel was undoubtedly the most normal of the lot. The few hours he had spent with the Urnfield Orphans was gradually unfolding like some kind of a strange anthropological study on steroids: for every normal human action, belief or behavior, he thought, they had seven corresponding abnormal responses. It was hard to believe they had been raised by the same man.

Number Six's smile was warmer than it had any right to be among these people as he came up the drive. He had appropriated a flak jackets from the corpse of one of the hostiles, and wore it loosely over his torso, shielded from view by the khaki jacket he had stolen from the Jeeps left at the bottom of the driveway."You found Gravy!" he crowed, a note of joy coloring his voice. "We're bringing her with us, right?"

Number One eyed William apprehensively. "I don't think that'll be a very popular idea," she said, her voice not entirely devoid of humor.

"You think correctly," William replied, straight-faced. The creature named Gravy had found its way onto Number Five's head now, clinging to his skull with a tenacity that reminded William of something much smaller and wilder, like a badger or a rat. He hadn't noticed its tail until now, curled and scaled and wavering gently in a non-existent wind.

"Look at us," Number Four remarked. He clasped his gloved hands over his chest and feigned a swoon. "A few hours in one another's company and it's like we've always known each other. My heart is honestly a little warmed. William, I'm starting to feel like you might be the brother I never had."

"You have four brothers."

"And I like none of them. Family is strange like that."

William rolled his eyes. Catching Number One's steady hazel gaze, he gestured, torn between hesitation and politeness, and Thorn and orphan alike stepped aside from the larger group to speak more quietly as Axel marshaled the other Forsaken to prepare for their departure. Even without Axel indicating as much, William thought he would have easily identified Number One as the unofficial matriarch of the motley little group - it was all in the way she held herself, the expression on her face, the way the others would flicker their gaze over to her to gauge her reaction before they acted or spoke. William wasn't sure if it was fear or love. Number One was not someone, he thought, that anyone would want to trifle with.

"You and I going to speak about who these guys are or what they want?" She cut straight to the chase. William appreciated that about her. It reminded him a little bit of Axel - frankness, he thought, seemed to be hereditary. She did, however, keep her voice soft, her tone hushed, as though conferring in secrecy. It didn't escape his notice that her eyes never left her siblings, who still moved with tense suspicion around one another - although, William noticed with some degree of amusement, it did seem as though Gravy had managed to heal some wounds by virtue of proximity, judging by the way Number Six and Four crowded around Number Five to greet the little monster with soft, affectionate words.

"They didn't seem to know themselves," William replied mildly, slipping his hands into his pockets and settling his gaze on the spires of the Urnfield. There was a coyness in his voice that he didn't bother to hide, a silent urge to Number One to just keep asking.

Number One's eyes narrowed. "The Abyss said their minds were... inculcated."

William cocked an eyebrow. "You believe that?"

"Give me a reason to doubt it."Number One's voice was no-nonsense and blunt. William nearly smiled at how much like their father she sounded. It was, he thought, very odd, the different collection of Thorn personality traits which seemed to have been haphazardly distributed among the orphans, so clearly discernible to a stranger after so little time with them. Number One's pragmatic outlook, Number Four's sharp intelligence, Seven's aloof misanthropy. Uncanny. William hadn't believed he could miss a man like Mr Thorn, and yet there was something about seeing an entirely new side to a life he had believed he had known in its broadest strokes.

William was silent for a moment, and then nodded reluctantly. "Anything I say," he said. "Stays between you and me."

"We'll see."

"Number One..."

"I don't," Number One said, holding up her hand as though to cut him off physically and verbally. "Lie to my family."

"Oh, but they lie to you."

"Yeah," she said darkly."They're assholes."

That surprised a laugh out of him, a wry chuckle that prompted him to turn from Number One so he could address it to the back door. "You said it," he said. "Not I."

"Yeah," Number One mused. "I can. You can't. Perks of being an orphan."

William shook his head. "I'll try to bear that in mind." He sobered a little, his mirth drying in his throat even as it rose anew. "You know about the Church of Dust?"

"I know of it." Even sheltered here, William thought, far from reality, he imagined that was hard to miss. The Reckoning had changed so much about the world - a cataclysm of that size, it was only natural that people sought some sense of order or reason in the chaos that had been unleashed upon the world. Cults rose, faiths fell, no one really knew what was happening and everyone sought some way to justify it to themselves. The Church had been one such attempt, and probably the most successful one, spreading across the face of this world like a dark blight. William couldn't say he thought highly of the sect, but then William thought highly of very little indeed.

"You know...?"

Number One shrugged non-chalantly. "Religious nutjobs. The Reckoning was a rapture that, by the way, will come again when you least expect it. Those left behind are damned unless they follow the rules and become dust. The Forsaken are demons or angels or saints... well, we're _something_." Close, William thought, close but not quite. The Church of Dust had even incorporated the Urnfield Orphans into their doctrine. William wondered if these flawed, hurt kids knew that thousands of men and women believed them strange messiahs - and what they thought of it. The Conspiracy of Seven, they called them, as though each orphan was a raven, dark and glossy and full of spite as birds tend to be.

"That's the long and short of it." He folded his arms and set his head with some determination. "It's more than just a cult of maniacs. Sometimes, in some places, anyway. It has influence... and power."

"When you say power..."

William nodded. "When I say power I mean _power_. Forsaken. Strong ones. I've heard that they have a guy who crawls into your head and hollows you out. Just scrapes out all your thoughts and eliminates every single urge you've ever possessed except to do what he tells you to."

"You think he sent those guys after us? You think some _church_ sent those guys after us?"

"It's my working theory."

Number One shook her head in disbelief. Her dark hair flicked back and forth as might the tail of the snake. "They really don't think much of us, do they? As a rule I try not to agree with the Fortune too often, but they really underestimated us."

"Your feelings are hurt, are they?"

"Deeply wounded. Might never recover." Number One's gaze still had not left her siblings. There was, William thought, something in her eyes that he didn't think he was meant to see. "That isn't what you wanted to tell me, though."

"It isn't?"

"I don't believe so." She turned to him. "There's no reason not to share that with everyone. Which means you're dodging what you really want to say. Which means it's something bad."

William smirked. "You're an observant one."

"I can pay basic attention. That shouldn't surprise you."

"I arrived with low expectations."

He thought she was tempted to smile, but instead she just said, "what is it, Specs?"

William shrugged. It was moments like these he envied Numbers Four and Seven their gloves. He thought it would be nice to have something to fiddle with as he spoke. He didn't like to deliver terminal prognoses with Number One's steely, steady gaze boring into him. "Obviously," he began, drawing out every syllable. "I did my research finding you all. You didn't exactly make that easy, by the way."

"You are speaking," Number One said sardonically. "To the undisputed kings and queens of hide-and-seek."

"You all did a marvellous job of making my life difficult. But I've been studying the Forsaken for... quite a while. Like father, like son, I suppose. And -" He took a deep breath. "You know, there was thirty of you created that day. Thirty children of the dust. And I'm still missing a few, but there's less than half of you still alive."

"What do you mean?" Number One had gone very still, very quickly. William thought you could have pricked her with a pin and received no response, so focused was she on him in that single instant. Behind her, Seven was standing back from the others, with her gloved hands clasped in front of her, the bruises which had blossomed on her skin slowly receding from observable view as might the tide retreat from shore. It struck William for perhaps the thousandth time how pretty the youngest orphan might have been in another life, unmarred by whatever dark force within her constantly wounded and healed and hurt again and anew without mercy.

"I mean," William said softly. "That at least fifteen Forsaken died before the age of twenty-one when their powers ate their bodies up from the inside out."

A house on fire could not compete with the sheer intensity of Number One's gaze in that instant. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

William nodded. The things that moved within Number Three's skin, he thought, Axel's growing inability to grasp his own existence and to cling to awakened reality, the incipient insanity lurking within the threads of Number Five's mind, the injuries that sprouted on Seven's skin like her bones were trying to escape from her. Every time they used their powers to push the world into breaking the rules and doing things their way, the world pushed back. The strength in their veins had to go somewhere, and it drove inward.

"Fifteen,"Number One repeated softly. "Fifteen..."

"Fifteen that I know of," William added. "And many more not yet dead but dying."

"We have swords over our heads," Number One said. "That isn't news. And an expiry date. Well, everyone does."

"I thought you ought to know."

Number One shook her head. "You were right to tell me," she agreed quietly. "Twenty one."

She was, William knew, twenty one years old - or at least close enough to it.

"Three times seven." She flashed a tired half-smile. "Good numbers mean good luck."

"I hope so."

Number One looked back at her siblings. "I'll... figure out if and how and when to tell them."

"If?"

She flicked him a look. "Ignorance is bliss," she said softly, and then without another word turned her back on him and walked back over to the group, giving Seven, William noticed, a wide berth as she passed. Number One gestured to Axel to follow, and the first and second orphans walked away from the Urnfield, across the wide green lawn towards the vehicles Number Six had managed to salvage from around the property to convey them to their destination. William watched them go, hoping he had made the right choice in telling her.

Truth, he thought, even mere grains of it carefully disseminated, was better than a wholesale lie if you wanted people to trust you.

The orphans didn't seem all that inclined to say farewell to the home they had only just rediscovered, judging by the way they began to drift from its threshold towards the vehicles at Number One's call. As Number Four passed the statute in the courtyard, he gently brushed an ungloved hand against its surface, almost carelessly. William watched Number Four's gift take hold as his fingerprints shone from the concrete surface as though he had dipped them in liquid gold before touching the statue. And then the gold caught like a disease and spread as though it had been poured, defying gravity to sweep skyward and convert all the stone into solid, shining, aureate metal. It did not burn away the moss which still clung to it, but only turned it to gold as well, leaving metal dripping from every bare feature of the stone.

Seven was the last one to go, lingering with her eyes on William, as though unsure he would follow them. He gestured as though to wave her away, and she turned away and walked to catch up with Number Three, who was standing at the open door of one of the vehicles and saying something argumentative to Number One.

William turned to the Urnfield, and felt a strange wave of hiraeth sweep over him, as the gold had swallowed the statue only moments earlier. He had spent perhaps two days here, he thought, and the only thought that had prevailed was the constant, nagging wonder of what it would have been like to grow up here, among the other orphans, one of the family if not one of the Thorns. Pausing, and curling his fingers into a fist at his side, he focused on the steady, heart-like _tickticktick_ of the watch against his skin and shifted his vision to look beyond that which the present saw fit to allow him to see. It was like refocusing on an object a little further away, he thought, consciously looking beyond that which was in front of you to see that which was further away.

And the past loomed forth to meet him, wavering and ghost-like in their pallor, and William held himself so as not to flinch or respond physically as the door of the Urnfield was swung open with a violence and a little dark-haired girl ran out, her jeans ragged and frayed at the edges, her fingers glittering with lead rings. The seven-year-old Number One ran towards the lawn and then shrieked as one of the wildflowers at the edge of the grass abruptly sprouted like the proverbial beanstalk. Its stem shot up into the air, its leaves grew long and thin, its petals blackened and thickened and then it was very obvious that it was not a flower but a vaguely humanoid shape that became Number Three, reaching out to grab Number One's arm. Before he could touch her, Number One threw out her hands and there was a silent vibration and the expulsion of force and Number Three was thrown off his feet and landed in the grass with a muffled thud.

Two smaller boys had faded into view from where they had taken a seat on the steps of the Urnfield, a black kid with long dreadlocks and a Mediterranean boy with a splint on his nose, as though he had recently broken it, laughing at the way Number One had treated Three like something of a rag-doll. There was something wrong about the quality of Three in the past, William thought, something too crisp about the edges of his shape as though he had been photoshopped into the memory, like he had been an afterthought. The others were hazy mist-soft and fog-faded, like an old photo of poor quality.

The memory faded as Number One turned to shout something at Axel, who was grinning from his recline on the steps. Axel gestured upwards to where Number Five had perched on the roof of the Urnfield, his curly hair askew as though he had just been in a hurricane. Number Five held up his hand and was about to speak when the Urnfield door swung open again and Mr Thorn stepped out and the whole memory faded once more, abruptly dissipating into tendrils of nothingness and leaving William stranded entirely in the here and the now, his watch still _tickticktick_ ing.

("Specs!" Number Six was calling from the car. "You coming?")

And William turned from the memory, and wished again that he had a reason to say goodbye to the Urnfield. He wondered when he would be caught in all of his lies. He wondered if he ever would. And with his father's gaze still burning in his back, William Thorn went to join the orphans.

* * *

 **The Urnfield Orphans**  
 **Number One:** The Thin Man - Zahara "Zara" Al-Yatim  
 **Number Two:** The Grimalkin - Axel "Ace" von Asche  
 **Number Three:** The Abyss - Ivan "Vanya" Kinzhalov  
 **Number Four:** The Fortune - Rezar "Rez" Orval  
 **Number Five:** The Haruspex - Leontios "Leo" Kelly  
 **Number Six:** The Shadow - Adrian "Fire Kid" Zavala  
 **Number Seven:** The Butcher - Esther "Essi" Graves

 **Number Zero:** The Prodigal - William "Specs" Thorn

* * *

 **Happy Christmas to those who celebrate it! Hope you enjoy this chapter as a little gift. Sorry it took so long to produce but I am happy to say now that we are more than 20, 000 words into the story! Simply incredible. I honestly can't believe how great you guys all are, and I want to say how grateful I am.**

 **A quick note: I know the changing names might be a little annoying for some readers, so I am going to try and make that a little clearer from now on. It's the easiest way for me to get into the respective voices of the characters (Zara uses aliases, Adrian uses full names, Adrian and Axel use nicknames, Vanya uses surnames, etc), but I will try and make it less confusing from now on - William may, as you will see, gradually switch from numbers to names as he gets to know the others.**

 **Also, this story has a little pinterest board if you guys are into that at all:** pinterest . com _/arrosaarmiarma/_. **It's still very much under development, but it does help with visualisation. Hopefully my vision of your characters is similar to your own!**

 **That's it from me for now. Please read and review, and let me know what you think!**


	9. Memoranda I

**From the personal notes of Mr Thorn**

 _ **December 2023**_

 **Number One** : recovering well fr 2nd bout leukemia lead containment no longer effective concerns re: proximity to others app unfounded no obvious contamination issues. so far my favorite.

 **Number Two:** our little schrödinger! nightmares continue to plague change of bedroom helped little. displacement now up to 2 mls no solution to sleep restraint apparent requires overnight observation.

 **Number Three** : remains v quiet supernatural talent not apparent at times displays hyperfixation typically of ASD esp clocks

 **Number Four:** sarcasm develops almost as quickly as abilities. most settled and yet least inclined to routine. gloves 100pc effective so far.

 **Number Five** : concerns re: mental acuity, stability, etc. keeping isolated from others for time being. gruesome. sense of nausea overwhelming when dealing 1 on 1

 **Number Six:** susceptible to manipulation due to naive eager to please nature. seeing things that aren't there. poss two talents? further investigation required.

 **Number Seven** : not yet regained consciousness. trauma highly likely.

 _Dictated but not read._

* * *

 **THE DECIMATION AND THE DUST, by Jennifer Many**

 ** _May 2021_**

"...in hindsight, the trouble was easy to predict. It was a small miracle that this problem reared its ugly head only twice, all across the world where the Forsaken was found. First, in Israel and Palestine, where the Forsaken child that appeared on the edge of Gaza became the subject of a fervent debate between the two communities, both of whom claimed her as one of their own. For a brief moment, the child who appeared from nothing became the face of a movement, the iconic image of the strife left behind by the Decimation..."

* * *

 **EVIDENCE EXHIBIT F: found on fridge of 23 Bertel Street**

 ** _November 2037_**

 _For Brooke -_

 _Do you remember still the falling stars_  
 _that like swift horses through the heavens raced_  
 _and suddenly leaped across the hurdles_  
 _of our wishes—do you recall? And we_  
 _did make so many! For there were countless numbers_  
 _of stars: each time we looked above we were_  
 _astounded by the swiftness of their daring play,_  
 _while in our hearts we felt safe and secure_  
 _watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate,_  
 _knowing somehow we had survived their fall._

 _x_

* * *

 **DIARY ENTRY**

 _ **February 2030**_

 **BENVOLIO:** In love?

 **ROMEO:** Out.

 **BENVOLIO:** Of love?

 **ROMEO:** Out of her favour, where I am in love.

* * *

 **GOOGLE SEARCHES**

 _ **September 2030**_

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* * *

 **CIVIL ORDER FOR REMOVAL TO HOSPITAL**

 _ **August 2031**_

STATE OF NEW YORK

 _JOHN DOE_ being brought before this court and it appearing to the court, on the basis of evidence presented to it, that such person has or may have a mental illness which is likely to result in serious harm to himself or others and the Director of _WHITEFEATHER HOSPITAL_ , a hospital specified in Section 9.39 of the Mental Hygiene Law having agreed to receive such a person, for determination whether such person should be retained.

NOW, THEREFORE, it is

ORDERED that pursuant to the provisions of Section 9.43 of the Mental Hygiene Law, the said _JOHN DOE_ be removed to _WHITEFEATHER_ for a determination by the Director of such hospital whether such person should be retained therein pursuant to the provisions of Section 9.39 of such law.

DATED 08.06.31

SIGNED _Guillaume_ _Épine_

* * *

 **"NO BAT-SIGNAL HERE: police deny vigilante link", The Arizona Telegraph**

 _ **July 2036**_

 _...police in Phoenix continue to deny the support and funding of external vigilantes, rejecting reports that the so-called "Fire Kid of Florence" is operating under their oversight or orders. "We condemn the use of unlawful and extrajudicial violence by civilians," their spokesman said today at an impromptu press conference on the steps of City Hall. "The rule of law must be upheld. We urge anyone with information about the latest rash of vigilantism to step forward and speak to us anonymously."_

 _The "Fire Kid" is still wanted in connection with several charges of arson and assault, after his apprehension of several drug dealers with the use of an improvised flamethrower nearly caused a wildfire. Sources within the police department claim that the "Fire Kid" is a member of the Forsaken, a secretive group of young adults linked to the tragic events of 2018..._

* * *

 **FBI MOST WANTED - Number Three**

 _ **January 2032**_

JANE DOE

Alias: _UNKNOWN_

Dates of Birth used: _UNKNOWN_

Height: 5'7"

Weight: _90 to 110 pounds_

Language: _Sokovian_

Hair: _Black_

Place of Birth: _UNKNOWN_

Eyes: _UNKNOWN_

Sex _: Female_

Race: _Asian_

Nationality: _UNKNOWN_

Abilities: _UNKNOWN_

Remarks: _Jane Doe is a member of the Myasnikov Crime family, and is known to frequent the area of New York, New Jersey, and Baltimore. Jane Doe also has previous ties to Sokovia, Russia and Hungary._

 _CAUTION:_ Jane Doe is wanted for her alleged involvement in the kidnapping, torture and murder of a SHIELD Special Agent in 2022 in Sokovia. Additionally, she allegedly holds an active key support position assisting the activity of the Myasnikov Crime Family within the esstern United States.

 _REWARD:_ The United States is offering a reward of up to $40 million for information leading to the arrest or death of Jane Doe.

SHOULD BE CONSIDERED ENHANCED AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.

If you have any information concerning this person, please call 1-505-CALL-US or contact your nearest police station.


End file.
